The world’s largest hockey stadium is here, in India: the Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium, Rourkela. Built by Larsen & Toubro (L&T), the new 20,846 -seat stadium has been constructed in a record 15 months meeting all international specifications. Built across 50acres, it has one main playing field, a practice field, practice and fitness centres with state-of-the-art player change rooms, a hydrotherapy centre, steam rooms, sauna and more. The stadium was inaugurated by Odisha Chief Minister SJ Naveen Patnaik on January 5, 2023. The scope was to construct the main stadium with gallery, a hockey practice centre, main field of play, practice field of play and other ancillary structures like UG tank, substation and pump room, external work, stainconcrete along with road and landscape works. Apart from this, MV Satish Whole Time Director & Senior Executive Vice President (Buildings), L&T, adds, “The renovation of two hockey fields at Panposh, Rourkela was also part of our scope.” He shares that while theengineering was done by Collage Design and construction by L&T,L&T’s Engineering, Design & Research Centre (EDRC) was involved in vetting the structural stability and designing in such a way that the construction could be fast-tracked with readily available sections in the market. Initially, the location of the stadium was where the hockey practice centre is currently situated “We were left with no other option but to switch the location of the hockey practice centre and main stadium with each other because of the overlapping issues with the existing hostel building,” says Satish. “Thus, the main stadium was shifted south wherein the profile of the land was not uniform and there were level differences of up to 7 m at the south side. This change in location impacted the soil-bearing capacity because of which the isolated footings of the West Stand were redesigned and converted into raft, which again made uschange the core design of west stand from a fully RCC structure into a steel structure. To read the full feature, CLICK HERE.