Laing O’Rourke has begun manufacturing the 11,000 precast concrete segments that will form Everton FC’s new 52,888-seater stadium at Bramley Moore-Dock.

Dredging and infilling for the stadium’s foundations was completed in December and piling had commenced. Construction is now shifting to the next phase, where the framework starts to become clear.

The developers have been planning for this moment for several years with a pioneering "digital build". The arrangement of the precast segments has been configured through a digital Design for Manufacture Assembly method.

The precast slabs, which are mostly being made at Laing’s specialist factory in Nottingham, will arrive on site in a predetermined order and be immediately pieced together using 3D modelling. They will form the stadium’s superstructure and internal bowl, including floors, walls and pillars, before the steel skeleton and brick “skin” is added.

The decision to use precast off-site manufacture has many benefits. Firstly, it has enabled Laing to reduce the amount of cement in the structure, reducing its embodied carbon. The segments’ specific design through the 3D modelling will also speed up the necessary wiring and plumbing. Overall, this method will be 30% quicker than traditional construction, according to Laing.

Laing O’Rourke senior project manager Ben Townsley said: “In many ways, it’s a huge complex assembly, rather than traditional construction.

“Concrete is something that has been around since Roman times, but the way in which we are manufacturing it, is pioneering.

“In this case, thousands of the building’s components are being precast in our manufacturing facility, which we’ve had now for over 10 years.

“We take the building design, and manufacture bespoke products. Traditionally, we wouldn’t complete the design for the concrete frame until maybe the end of this year, but what we’ve had to do in this instance is design the whole frame much earlier in the process – we actually did it last year.

“The precast concrete elements are all manufactured off-site, before being assembled on-site. This process takes a lot of the potential quality and safety issues away from the work face and into a more controlled environment which minimises waste and improves sustainability.

“Also, rather than needing heavy labour on site to set up the temporary works for pouring the concrete; when you take it away and put it on an assembly line, you are mostly left with on site is lifting and crane work to install the units.

“It takes a huge amount of up-front design resource to coordinate this.

“The services are not actually cast into the concrete elements, but the voids need to be cast into the structure so the wiring and plumbing can be installed.

“That sounds simple, but it’s an incredibly complex process. You can imagine the number of different pipes and wires within a building of this magnitude and all that has been designed using 3D modelling.

“That 3D environment is a big part of the pioneering aspect. We call this the ‘digital build’, where our engineers, who would normally be working on-site in the mud, have been trained up-front in 3D modelling.

“They’ve taken structural engineers’ designs and re-drawn the whole building in a 3D environment.

“Using this method establishes all the clashes, complications and problems you might normally encounter before you get to site, which allows them to be resolved before you even start.

“We’ve used the method before on other structures, but this is the first time we have done it to this scale, and that means we can give the people on site – the joiners and steelfixers  who are actually building the stadium – 3D models on tablets, rather than a piece of paper.

“When you transition into this 3D world it is a huge leap that we’ve taken to modernise the industry, but I am completely convinced this is the right way to go.

“We have to become more efficient, increase productivity and provide certainty for our clients, and this is the way to do it.”

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