Optus Stadium, formerly New Perth Stadium, was completed in 2018. It has a capacity for 60,000 patrons and a provision for future expansion of up to 70,000 seats. It is located approximately five kilometres from the State’s capital city and is the third largest stadium in Australia.

BG&E provided civil and structural engineering services for Optus Stadium, Australia’s third largest stadium.

Our civil engineering team

The civil design for the 73-hectare precinct focused on improving existing land conditions to minimise ongoing maintenance of pavements, roads, in-ground services, and critical landscaped areas like the community oval. This approach considered the asset’s entire design life while minimising impacts on important ecological features such as the Swan River and River-fed Lake.

Recognising the interfaces with the surrounding State Transport Infrastructure, the design adopted an integrated approach for civil and landscaping works. The stormwater design philosophy aimed to provide a sustainable solution aligned with the landscaping vision for the sports precinct. Leveraging the Swan River Foreshore as a significant public resource, the project sought to enhance this area from environmental, infrastructure, health and safety, and ecological perspectives.

To address challenging ground conditions and settlements, the design suspended all ground slabs on piled foundations, integrating services into the slab using thickenings and service trenches.

Components of the structural engineering include

• The stadium’s superstructure features a steel frame with overall stability achieved through reinforced concrete walls designed to align with the stadium’s layout and accommodate lift shafts, service core, and plant rooms spanning the building’s height.
• The suspended slabs from level one to level five have been designed as conventional reinforced concrete slabs cast on Bondek to eliminate the need for propping during construction.
• The seating plats are precast prestressed concrete elements spanning a double grid of around 12 metres. The seating elements are generally single elements to simplify the pre-casting process and to limit the weight for lifting during installation.
• The structural roof is a three dimensional triangulated steel truss cantilever with a small back span to minimise the roof envelope. Fabric has been installed to the underside of the trusses which provides a triangulated open truss to the top. This roof structure was chosen to satisfy the client’s requirement for a roof system that was prop- free and modulated.