SSE Arena LED Ribbon Support Package

The SSE Arena Belfast needed a new LED ribbon fitted around its seating bowl, fixed back to a fully exposed, curved roof steel structure for which no 3D model existed. OD3 Group was appointed as project delivery partner to take the work from concept to installed steel — capture, design, detail, fabricate and set out — against a programme that allowed installation only on fixed dates between scheduled performances.

Capture the as-built, not the assumption

With no record model to work from, OD3 opened with reality capture. A Trimble X7 laser scanner recorded the entire bowl — every rafter, bracket and tier — as a millimetre-accurate point cloud, registered in Trimble RealWorks and tied to engineering control set with an RTS773 robotic total station. That single capture gave every downstream discipline one true picture of the structure as it actually stands, instead of assumptions drawn from old records.

Design and detail under one roof

From the cloud, OD3 modelled and coordinated the new support steel in Tekla Structures, federating it against the scanned roof in Trimble Connect so clashes were resolved on screen rather than on site. The practice carried the structural engineering design and responsibility — connections analysed in IDEA StatiCa, the frame checked in Autodesk Robot to Eurocode — then produced the full fabrication drawing package and managed fabrication with MEC Engineering. Capture, design, detailing and delivery sat with one team, which kept the model coordinated and the decisions quick.

Set out for a first-time fit

Back on site, the team used the robotic total station to mark every drill and bracket position straight from the coordinated model, so the bracketry landed exactly where the steel expected it. Modelled to LOD 500 and held to 2–5mm, the 5-tonne package went in cleanly inside the install windows between shows — the digital thread closed from scan to verified steel.