Commercial Value Engineering

Twickenham stadium is the home of English rugby. The Rugby Football Union were considering redeveloping the South Stand which would see the capacity of the stadium increased to 82,000 and would complete the redevelopment process started in the 1990’s. As part of the project I reviewed the various commercial elements of the new South Stand, including a large hotel, health and fitness facility and theatre, along with new corporate hospitality facilities. Working with the architect and costs consultants, I examined the commercial return generated by each area and identified areas where costs could be reduced with no impact on revenues. The scheme cost approximately £120 million and has been a great success for the RFU.

At another club, an assumption had been made that all corporate hospitlaity boxes had to have a direct view of the pitch with corridor access from the rear of the stand. This required an additional floor to be added to the stand. To test this assumption I carried out detailed market research through the local Chamber of Commerce targeting local businesses and well as conducting face to face interviews with existing box holders. What the research identified was that so long as the box was well designed and fitted out and the seats in the stand were segregated and had great views, the issue of the actual box having a pitch view was much less important. As aresult we were able to take an entire floor of the stadium construction and double load the corridor below with half the boxes facing the pitch and half facing out of the stadium.

On another stadium project, the architect had designed in a basement level with a service corridor around the whole building along with an underground car park for VIP's. While this was highly desirable, the stadium was significantly over budget and risked not being built. As part of the Value Engineering exercise I discussed the space usage with every head of department who had space allocated in the basement and identified if it could be located elsewhere. The net result was that with a little adaption and the relocation of car parking to surface level, we were able to remove the entire basement level from the design, saving approximately £70 million, sufficient to meet the budget and allow the construction of the stadium to commence.