The World Cup has ended with Germany the well deserved winners, proving it’s all in the planning. The tournament will probably be remembered as one of the most entertaining in recent history, with some amazing football, an astonishing 6 minutes from Germany against Brazil, and something for everybody to get their teeth into (eh Luis!).
Over the last five years Steer Davies Gleave is very proud to have worked, almost continuously, on projects directly related to the preparation of the World Cup. We have worked on nine of the 12 stadia, principally providing expert crowd flow advice, working closely with the design teams, construction companies and organising committees to ensure that the projects met local and international crowd safety standards.
We assisted São Paulo Fire Brigade to revise and update their stadia crowd safety standards (Instrução Técnica IT-12). These standards were then adopted nationally, helping to ensure a permanent legacy for future sport venue planning in the country.
We were the crowd flow consultants for the stadiums in the following host cities:
- Rio de Janeiro
- São Paulo
- Brasilia (pictured below)
- Salvador
- Fortaleza
- Recife
- Manaus
- Cuiaba
- Natal
In addition, we also provided other services in some host cities:
- Signage & wayfinding
- Venue and city transport plans
- ‘Last mile’ planning
- Operational strategies
- Legacy and master planning
- Vehicle circulation and parking design
- Overlay planning
Rio de Janeiro - Maracanã Stadium
Originally, we worked with the construction company and architectural team to ensure that the initial design met crowd safety standards. This included a major revision of the spectator access strategy. Our advice ensured that the construction programme was not adversely affected by the required changes to the design.
In 2012 we were contracted by Rio de Janeiro State government to produce an access strategy for the stadium and the surrounding area. The study focused on ensuring a real legacy for the investment planned around the stadium. On a recent visit to the Maracanã, during the World Cup, it was great to see that the majority of our recommendations had been implemented. These included:
- Incorporation of São Francisco Xavier station on Line 1 of the Rio metro into the stadium access strategy
- Modifications to the surrounding road network to improve pedestrian links and infrastructure between the stadium and stations and also to improve circulation of local traffic
- Creation of a pedestrian plaza adjacent to the Museum of the Indians.
São Paulo
SDG acted as crowd flow consultants for the construction company, working to ensure the architectural project of the stadium met crowd safety standards.
We provided the São Paulo Organising Committee with event operational planning advice, working closely with the local transport operators for the main stadium transport hubs. The work included detailed pedestrian modelling of the metro and train stations, recommendations for match day operational strategies both inside and outside the stations and for the ‘last mile’. The majority of these recommendations were implemented for the event.