Developments at Fratton Park

Transcript

00:00 So I'm Steve Gripps, Managing Director of PMC Construction.

00:04 We're the main contractor at the stadium.

00:06 We've been working here now for seven years.

00:08 As we're coming towards the end of the improvements now,

00:12 you'll see this year we have a new TV gantry going in the south stand,

00:16 which is a part of the new Sky TV deal.

00:19 We have a new TV gantry going in the frat and end,

00:22 in the upper elements, which is suspended from the trusses,

00:25 so it doesn't impact the fans.

00:27 We've got additional toilets going in the south-east corner,

00:31 which we couldn't install this year because the temporary control room was in there,

00:35 but that will give balance to the stand and the much-needed toilets that the fans have been requesting.

00:40 And in the north stand we've walked through, we've created upper mezzanine areas

00:44 where we're putting more concessions, more toilets, more urinals, more milling spaces

00:49 to take some of the heave up from the ground, put it onto the first floor to balance the stand out.

00:54 Tell us a little bit more about the development of the TV gantry itself.

00:59 How is it different to the old one?

01:01 Yeah, it's vastly different.

01:03 So if we shoot across there now, you can see that there's a small camera position up in the top of the roof.

01:09 That used to hold two cameras.

01:11 We then created a lower gantry, which the fans would have seen this season.

01:16 That had three further cameras on it.

01:19 But that position is where we want the top seats for hospitality.

01:25 So it's all been moved now to the upper elements, where there'll be five Sky cameras when we're being filmed live on Sky.

01:31 And when others are using it, the university, etc., there's three further spaces for that and the PA announcer.

01:41 So as you can see, the timeline is quite tight.

01:45 The pitch work will finish phase one this coming Sunday.

01:49 Our crane mats are placed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

01:53 And on Friday, the crane arrives.

01:56 The crane will take three days to erect.

01:58 And then we've got to the first week of June to erect the TV gantry before the crane has to be removed.

02:05 And then phase two of the pitch carries on, which is the seeding, so that we have a surface for the start of the season.

02:12 While that's ongoing, the scaffold will remain and we'll fit out the gantry, which is about another three or four weeks.

02:19 So all things going well. We should be finished by the end of July. Fingers crossed.

02:23 - The end of the season. - Exactly that.

02:26 [ Silence ]