Engineering a game-changing stadium

Climbing 30 stories from the ground, covering two million square feet, the new stadium in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia US stands as an architectural wonder that is changing the game of sports entertainment and setting a new benchmark for stadium design around the world.

The Mercedes-Benz Stadium is home to Atlanta’s major league football and soccer teams. The stadium is crowned with a first-of-its-kind ocular retractable roof. At the push of a button, eight triangular “petals” - weighing 500 tons each – move along 16 individual tracks, opening like the aperture of a camera and unveiling Atlanta’s skyline.

Circling the perimeter below the roof, is a ground breaking 360-degree halo video board. Rising nearly six stories high, at 63,800 square feet, the halo display is the world’s largest LED scoreboard, creating an unparalleled, world-class experience for 71,000 devoted fans.

Bringing this revolutionary feat of engineering to life required more than 27,000 tons of structural steel. Understanding the critical nature of steel construction quality control, Wood worked with more than 20 structural steel fabrication shops and inspectors across the US and Canada to perform bolting, welding and coating inspections on large pieces of steel. With the largest trusses reaching 80 feet in height and around 300 feet in length, each assembled truss was lifted by the largest track-mounted crane in North America to construct the skeleton of the massive 14.5-acre retractable roof. Our on-site project team re-inspected each piece for safety and integrity after placement.

Along with steel inspections, we performed quality assurance testing on about 85% of the concrete super structure both in the field and in the lab, ensuring the stadium was constructed to plan and functioned as designed. This challenging feat required ingenuity and innovative technology, considering more than 150,000 cubic yards of concrete was used.

Voted one of the world’s 25 most impressive megaprojects by Popular Mechanics the iconic stadium is making another mark on history by hosting the biggest football game of the year in 2019.