Hot on the heels of the announcement of the sale of its Boleyn ground in Upton Park, West Ham has released time-lapse footage of its new home being readied.
The video footage of the Olympic Stadium shows the venue being dismantled in previously unseen footage.
With the existing roof to be dismantled over a period of four months, the process, which began in November, firstly saw the lighting panels come down.
Temporary cables were strung across the field of play, linking opposite towers to one another. Then the floodlights were removed in pairs using crawler cranes with 600 tonnes lifting capacity. The lamps were then removed and the towers dismantled.
Balfour Beatty is carrying out the work using a specialist company. A team of around 20 abseilers erected all the temporary cables and removed the floodlights.
With the lighting towers down, attention has turned to the ceremonies’ tripods, which are fixed on to the compression ring - the outer circle of steel that runs around the top. They supported cables which connect across the venue to allow scenery and staging for the opening ceremony to ‘fly’ across the ‘skyzone’.
Balfour Beatty will soon take down the fabric of the roof and gradually lower the existing cable-net structure, bring to an end the dismantling of the stadium roof.
Only then can construction of the new roof, twice the size of the original, begin in earnest in spring of this year. Measuring 84 metres at its deepest point, the world’s longest cantilevered roof will cover every single seat.
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