St George’s Park

St George’s Park, a new National Football Centre being built in Burton, is set to become the sporting destination for coaches, players and officials. The £80m project will be the centre for excellence for football development and coach education. It will be home for all 24 England teams from the seniors through to the juniors, as well as teams with cerebral palsy and those who are partially sighted.

It will include 12 football pitches, including an elite full-sized pitch that is an exact replica of Wembley Stadium. There will also be a full size indoor 3G pitch and an external all-weather 3G pitch. Three of the pitches will be available for use by the community.

In addition to a range of sporting facilities St George’s Park will include a 25,000 square foot medical centre that will become the first FIFA Centre of Medical Excellence in England. Boasting specialist clinicians and technology, it will provide screening, diagnosis and rehabilitation for football who suffer from sports injuries.

It will also house offices for FA Learning, who are relocating from Wembley. Additionally there will be a hydrotherapy suite and three gymnasiums, one of which is a biomechanical gym that incorporates an altitude gym.

Working with the main contractor Bowmer and Kirkland, Billington Structures are responsible for the design, fabrication and erection of St George’s Park. Three large steel framed structures have been erected which will form the indoor sports areas. The steel erection was a complex procedure as the design comprised 80m wide spans of large column free space. A series of large 4.5m deep trusses have been erected.

The roof of the indoor pitch, supported by the trusses, has been constructed from a PVC material which is held in place by more than 10,000 brackets, welded to the truss sections by our team. One of the most striking features of the project is the structural steelwork entrance, which comprised a tubular structure with stainless steel bracing rods.