Hill Dickinson Stadium for Everton Football Club: engineering design of the roof

Hill Dickinson Stadium, the new stadium for Everton Football Club, was completed in early 2025. The formal opening, with the first English Premier League match, took place on 24 August 2025 with a 2–0 victory over Brighton and Hove Albion. The club, fans and players have been delighted with their new home. Much of the story of the project is very much an engineering one, overcoming significant challenges to deliver a project 9 years after the first engineering site visit. This paper is one of a series on the stadium and this one addresses the engineering design of the steel roof structure. The unusual site and architectural constraints are presented, leading to an explanation of why several different concepts needed to be explored before selection of the final choice. A large body of this paper presents the detailed description of all scales and granularity of the steel roof design, including primary trusses, secondary rafters and purlins, presenting their design in the context of significant large loading demands and integration with the striking architectural cladding and other systems. The overall design presented particularly unusual challenges in terms of movement joints. These are presented, along with the design solutions.