Seven months after fitting the first façade panel on Everton Football Club’s new Hill Dickinson Stadium in the UK, skilled workers secured panel number 872, the final section of the barrel-shaped cladding that wraps around the full length of the east and west stands. By this point, the process had become routine. Using a specially adapted crane attachment to guide the polished aluminum panels into place, the installation team followed a sequence that had already been tested, refined and validated inside a virtual twin ahead of time.

In construction, this level of certainty is unusual. The industry has traditionally relied on solving problems in the field. However, when you have nearly a thousand unique panels to install on a tight schedule, you can’t leave anything to chance, which is why main contractor Laing O’Rourke and specialist contractor Lindner Prater brought in engineering company Prodtex to rehearse the entire façade installation digitally.

“The idea was to bring us in to do digital validation of the installation process and de‑risk it before work began,” said Ricky Cartwright, head of technology at Prodtex. “It was almost the perfect project for us because usually we get called in at the point of installation, when something’s gone wrong or the design is already locked down. Here, the design and installation method weren’t yet fully fixed, so we had the opportunity to evaluate the whole process and make changes to get the best solution.”

Working months ahead of installation, the Prodtex team, specialists in deploying Dassault Systèmes solutions for construction, built a detailed 3D model of the stadium infrastructure and simulated the façade installation process using CATIA and DELMIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Bringing design, structural performance, process simulation and operational planning together in a single collaborative environment enabled the team to identify risks, avoid delays and save an estimated €350,000 in installation costs.

Read for more information how DELMIA Ergonomics was leveraged:

https://www.3ds.com/insights/customer-stories/prodtex-construction-planning