The Yorkshire firm behind Tottenham Hotspur’s new multi-use pitch

SCX will see the pitch it designed, engineered and installed being used for the game between Spurs and Crystal Palace on Wednesday April 3.

The first match follows two test event games at the new 62,000-seater stadium. The grass surface can be rolled back to reveal am NFL pitch below and the system can be used for music concerts and other events.

Project director, Danny Pickard, said it was one of the company’s biggest projects, and one of the quickest in terms of delivery timescales.”

“It has been a phenomenal success, equal to what we have achieved with the retractable roofs for Centre Court and No.1 Court for the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon, and within a very tight timescale,” he said.

“The Tottenham pitch went from being perceived as the highest risk part of the project – with all the moving parts, the turf joins and an engineering concept that had not been tried before – to something neither we nor the client had to worry about.

“It’s fantastic. Everything was completed on time despite the huge scale of the project, and communication has been the key. We have a really great client in Spurs.”

The retractable real grass surface splits into three pitch-long steel trays. When the trays slide together, the join is invisible and imperceptible to the players. The trays, weighing more than 3,000 tonnes each, can be rolled under the new South Stand to reveal the NFL artificial surface in a process taking about 25 minutes.

The mechanical tests included the sideways movement of the side trays to meet the centre tray, the defining feature that makes the pitch a world first. Teams of electrical, mechanical and design engineers from SCX Special Projects, based in Wincobank, Sheffield, were on hand.

Nick Cooper, Head of Moving Structures at Tottenham Hotspur, said: “It worked first time exactly how we wanted it to work.”

Christopher Lee, managing director of Populous’ EMEA, said the brief was to design a perfect stadium and pitch for the English Premier League alongside the perfect stadium and pitch for the NFL.