Deans Stand, originally called the East Stand, was built to replace the stands at the AMI Stadium which were demolished in 2007. With three tiers and a seating capacity of 38,628, the construction of Deans Stand offered many challenges.
I was working as a Crane Operator for around nine months of the time it took to build the stand. On site, we had two 200 tonne crawlers, one with a fixed fly and the other a luffing fly. We also had mobile cranes available to assist too. During the peak period of construction, there was around 180 workers and six cranes were on site each day.
Constructed of precast concrete and steel, cranes were an essential part of the construction process. Our team regularly needed to move the materials around the site, often shifting them 400 metres from one end of the site to the other. This required considerable logistical planning, not only because of the weight of the structures we had to move, but due to their large sizes too. A crawler with a luffing fly was used to walk these large steel and concrete fixtures around the worksite.