Students tour the Seagull’s nest

21/10/2011

Students enjoyed their trip to the Amex stadium

Barry Hutton and Mark Read took a group of 14-16 learners from local schools (Sackville Shool in East Grinstead, Oriel High School in Crawley, The Forrest School in Horsham, and Downlands Community School in Hassocks) to the Amex Stadium in Brighton on Tuesday 4th October.

The students have chosen to do the Construction Diploma as an option at school and attend Central Sussex College's Crawley campus once a week. The trip enabled them to look at the construction of the new award-winning stadium, home to Brighton and Hove Albion, and look behind the scenes at the building services and management systems.

Mark Hooper, project engineer on the original construction, gave the group a tour of the control room, media room, dressing rooms, pitch side, main plant and generator rooms, boxes and hospitality suites.

Mark Read says; "The students were given a chance to turn on the floodlights and while Mark was taking us around he was radioed to turn up the air conditioning for the Directors' meeting that was taking place. The students were able to see how this was done using the latest state-of-the-art computer technology from a computer in another part of the stadium. During our four-hour visit, Barry Hutton also took the opportunity to give a half-time team talk in the home dressing room!"

The group came away with newly acquired knowledge about the energy rating of buildings, control systems, construction aspects of the roof and the stands, building maintenance and much more.

Mark Hooper praised the group for the way they were keen to ask questions and make notes. Mark Read added: "They were a credit to themselves, their schools and the College."