Athlete’s Village Temporary Kitchen and Dining for Gold Coast Games

The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games welcomed over 6,500 athletes and officials from 71 nations to compete in 17 different sports. On top of this there were over 2,500 workforce personnel. All athletes were fed from the main dining hall which was operational 24 hours, serving over 20,000 meals per day.

With an overall footprint of 6,800m2, PKL’s scope of work was complex due to the design and set up of the temporary kitchen to fit within a tent structure. The main dining hall was located inside an existing cold shell space that was purpose built to accommodate future tenancy for a large scale supermarket.

The site had many challenges which PKL overcame due to the experience of previous Games. The challenges involved bringing together service interfaces between the tent construction and permanent construction for games time and legacy use. On top of this, it wasn’t just the normal distribution of gas, water and electrics. PKL also had the sourcing and procurement of the tent structure, tent air handling and air conditioning systems.

If this wasn’t enough, the site was also on a slope of 1.5m meaning a construction of a scaffold foundation system was required. The total construction period was within an extremely short time frame. PKL had possession of the site from mid November and despite the tight period, it was handed over in mid February. There followed exhaustive testing and commissioning procedures before the building was finally handed over to GOLDOC.