The rise of GL events UK's sporting infrastructure

It’s a huge source of pride for our business that, over the last ten years, we’ve been involved in some of the largest sporting occasions on the planet; from London 2012 to Glasgow 2018; from the Ryder Cup and The Open, to Silverstone and the Cheltenham Festival.

You name the sport; rugby, golf, horse racing, cricket, tennis, motor racing, athletics, and we can show you an example of how we’ve supported one of its stellar occasions. One sport though, sees us doing something slightly different; football.

Over the last three years we’ve had massive growth in our construction business, specifically at professional level football grounds across the UK. This is new territory for us, and slightly different from our usual business; in this case, we’re not just building temporary infrastructure, but permanent.

First of all, it’s a massive endorsement of our business skill set to make the jump from temporary to permanent. We’ve been asked to build main grandstands for the likes of Exeter City, Plymouth Argyle and many others. Many have been complex builds that have included seating stands, changing room facilities, club shops, toilets, conference facilities, and hospitality areas. The only difference from the other side of our business is that these facilities are going nowhere for 25 years, when usually we can be dismantling within a couple of weeks or days!

What it does demonstrate though, is the sophistication of both our own production quality and of many other companies in our industry. That the switch from semi-permanent to permanent has been so slick, shows the quality of our project management, our planning, and our execution of major builds. It speaks volumes about the quality of people we have here at GL events.

It also shows that our industry can be trusted to create safe, long standing stadia, that is robust and safe. That we easily comply to complex and rigorous safety and construction standards, both for the building team, but also for the build itself. As a business, we’ve been able to share learnings around health and safety, construction quality, and design, that enriches both the permanent and semi-permanent sides of our business.

For us, this is a major and positive endorsement of our industry, underlining how much we have evolved as construction specialists, that we can compete with major stand and stadia builders, through our heritage in the temporary arena. It should be a source of pride for our clients around the world that the quality of temporary infrastructure builds is so high that it is being adopted in the permanent constructions world.

Finally, this is about our continual pursuit of the very highest quality. We’ve always wanted to be an agile business that can adapt its skill set and diversify its product. It allows for one side to challenge the other side of our company, and for everyone to get better.

Scott Jameson, CEO of GL events UK