Buro Happold Al Ahly Stadium-Hill Dickinson Stadium attainments

Article posted by Coliseum, July 30^th, 2026

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Rob May and Jack Treble of the British professional services firm Buro Happold talks about the humanizing-digitizing aspects in a venue with the former talking about the under-construction Al Ahly Stadium near Cairo (Egypt) and the latter share details of the Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool, UK.

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Rob May is a Partner at Buro Happold based in the United Kingdom. With a background in Structural Engineering he has experience leading a variety of large-scale and complex building projects from concept to construction including the stadia, the arenas and the cultural and infrastructure buildings over 20 years.

Jack Treble is a digital advisory leader based in the United Kingdom with over 20 years experience delivering technology, informed consulting and design for the built environment.

In an exclusive discourse with ‘Coliseum’, Rob May, Partner, Buro Happold, UK, presents a case study of the Al Ahly Stadium near Cairo (Egypt) and Jack Treble, Associate Director, Buro Happold, UK, presents a case study of the Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool (UK). May details how he and the Buro Happold team had to face a lot of constraints and challenges while working on the Al Ahly Stadium as it is a highly constrained and complex site. Treble talks about the term ‘smart’ in context with the Hill Dickinson Stadium – “So, really about being ‘smart’ is about having that agility to change with the changing outcomes and desires of the club (read the Premier League team Everton F.C. whose home is the Hill Dickinson Stadium) and the fans.”

Buro Happold

Bath (UK)-based Buro Happold is an international, integrated consultancy of engineers, designers and advisers. For over 45 years Buro Happold has built an unrivaled reputation by delivering creative, value-led solutions for the benefit of the people, the places and the planet.

Al Ahly Stadium

The Al-Ahly Stadium is a new 42,000-seat sports arena under construction in Sheikh Zayed City, Greater Cairo, Egypt, to serve as the permanent home ground for the Egyptian football club Al Ahly SC which plays in the Egyptian Premier League, the highest tier of the Egyptian football league system. They are known to be the most successful club in world football based on the league titles. It is scheduled for completion and opening by 2029.

Designed by Gensler the Al Ahly Stadium design features several innovative solutions and embedded technology. The design team integrated a sunken pitch and asymmetric Bowl due to height restrictions imposed by flight paths with the nearby Sphinx International Airport. This creates a dynamic matchday atmosphere while also leveraging cooler earth temperatures to reduce the ambient heat and achieving sustainability through passive design measures.

Hill Dickinson Stadium

The 52,769-seat Hill Dickinson Stadium, known as the Bramley-Moore Dock Stadium or the Everton Stadium during construction and renamed for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in Vauxhall, Liverpool, England (UK). It is the home ground of the Premier League club Everton F.C.

Al Ahly Stadium

‘Highly Constrained Stadium’

Remarked Rob May, “I am going to talk to you about Digitizing and Humanizing. Slightly opposing case studies but we are trying to bring the two things together with a common theme of humanizing things. And I like to include this in lot of athlete design and case studies because so much of what we do is around the table. The Al Ahly SC is a huge club in Africa with absolutely massive followings. 2018 was one of the first time that I got engaged with the top-flight and was asked to answer the question – ‘Can you fit a 42,000-seat stadium within a 30-meter-high limit’ to which we said ‘Yes, kind of’. In these few years we are trying to fit a similar capacity in a highly constrained stadium and also the other complexities and challenges that come with that.”

‘Unlocking Site’

“Fast forward to 2024 and we were working with Gensler Architects (a global architecture, design and planning firm) and having a latest crack at unlocking the Al Ahly Stadium site and the constraint seem to be even higher. So, rather than just 130 meter and high limit there was a 30 meter on one side and a 12-meter-high limit on each side of the stadium. And still with the design to fit 40-45,000 seats inside. So, probably one of the most constrained sites and challenges we have had because it is right next to the Sphinx International Airport and quite close to the flight path.”

Challenges Galore

“So, the first thing we focused on was the massing and trying to come up with short circuit and minimum digging into the ground, minimal carbon but actually something that fits within that high restriction. And then asymmetric high restriction as well which is quite challenging. So, if you want something that stay around the outside to really bring down that edge of the stadium then you put the structure into the middle like the 44,667-seat Education City Stadium in Al Rayyan, Qatar. So, we started putting it like that but then we quickly realized that on the right hand side the cable-net tensile structure is likely to be symmetric and relatively simple and this was a difficult challenge getting over the East Stand. So, we looked to different options back and forth with Gensler and there is a different version of seats we have on the sides now and the side-loaded seats are one size, two size and it is quickly quite difficult to fill all of the seats without having a wrap with a lower tier.”

Buro Happold Feat

Concluded Rob May, “By virtue of having a pretty diverse bunch of engineers at Buro Happold we were able to bring together different parts and high bid parts of the solution to something that kind of nestles together and the result of it then is something that is pretty neat we think and also makes that really highly constrained and as we had said to the client at the start ‘Constraints are constraints, they may give us challenges’ but we like challenges as engineers and it is a pretty phenomenal design at the end of all of it.”

Hill Dickinson Stadium

Three Buckets

Remarked Jack Treble, “I am Jack Treble. I am a technology consultant and for the last 10 years I have helped the Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur F.C. deliver their tech strategy, design and implementation for their fantastic new home field – the Hill Dickinson Stadium. The term ‘smart’ is used in a lot of conversations these days. And for me it is really about the intentful technology and I divide it into three buckets – the first bucket is about doing what’s expected, to be compliant and stay up to date with the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA) for the regulations that are required just to keep the lights on. The second bucket is about exceeding those current expectations and the current discourse about this being frictionless and personalized and the connectivity throughout the entire Hill Dickinson Stadium and the third bucket is doing what all is expected – creating those magic moments and using technology to help with that.”

‘Pain-Gain Points’

“The Everton F.C. set the design team 11 key development principles and whilst embracing technology was at No.10 they recognized the importance of it and it is really about people first and it became to be known as the ‘People’s Project’. So, my team recognized that digital piece. This is about in-person engagement. So, we took that further and this is an early example back in 2017-2018. Looking towards the different personas – both operate, design and the audience, and the fans and so on. Define the personas, look to the pain points and the gain points.”

Digital Strategy

“When we came back to revisit the digital strategy in 2024 where the club had a huge amount of maturity around looking at soccer graphic profiling, updating the Customer Relationship Management (CRM), where the Evertonian fans go we were able to start thinking about any new technologies whether there was a positive but also a negative influence of implementing that technology and assessing and measuring the experience at every single interaction point through the journey. Once we understood the desired outcomes and experience we could then go to town and assess all that is possible from the technology point of view.”

Wrap-up

Technology Buckets

Concluded Jack Treble, “I had responsibility for the venue-led technology buckets with series of consultants in the team designing those. Recognizing those integrations with the wider tech stacks from the party operators and so on and so forth.”

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