Lord's in winter: Bob Diaper

Date released: 17 February 2010

Lord's in winter: MCC Estates Manager, Bob Diaper What happens at Lord's during the close season? MCC's Estates Manager Bob Diaper talks about the work his department does from floodlights to the less glamorous toilets.

Diaper and the MCC Estates Department are responsible for pretty much every part of the ground that isn't grass. If it's not a pitch and the groundstaff don't work on it - the Estates team do.

Planning for the future

Bob Diaper is a planner. He turns up to our interview, in brass-rimmed spectacles, with sheaves of paper.

But Diaper's no pen-pusher, nor another layer of red-tape and bureaucracy. Without meticulous planning much (if not all) of the Estates team's work would never happen.

Between October and April (six months) the Estates team have to fit in a year's worth of work.

There is no flexibility - Test Matches cannot be moved - and with a budget of over £1m there is a lot to be done in a very small time-frame.

"It's our busiest time of the year." Diaper confirms.

"Obviously it's busy during a major match but the time between the last match and the first match is when we have to get an awful lot done.

"If we get it all right pre-season - then it makes the season run a lot more smoothly.

"There's a certain amount we have to do that's statutory - gas maintenance, emergency light maintenance, maintaining our lifts etcetera - that's something we have to do throughout the year but we do the bulk of it in the build-up to the season."

Big crowds can bring big pressure Diaper's slightly dismissive about these elements of the tasks his team undertake, they're so commonplace for him, but without them there is no Ground Safety Certificate. No certificate and the ground cannot open... at all, Test Match or no Test Match. That could mean around 30,000 very disappointed Members and ticket holders.

Safety is of paramount importance and everything is checked and checked again, as Diaper explains:

"One of the biggest close season jobs we do is the testing of all the barriers in all the stands of the ground.

"Structural engineers go around every handrail, banister and piece of steelwork and test each piece. That takes us from the end of the season almost right up until the start of the next."

This sort of testing is another key element to keeping the ground running. The Estates team's work falls, largely speaking, into two main categories: reactive and preventative.

In a nutshell: Fixing it when it's broken or maintaining it so it doesn't break. No prizes for guessing which one is cheaper and easier to plan for.

"There are certain things we just don't want to have to face on a major match day." Diaper says.

"Take the vacuum pumps in the Grand Stand - they run the sewerage and waste for the whole stand. If that fails on a major match day well... we just don't want that to happen."

Has it ever happened?

"Yes. A few years ago, just before the South Africa Test we had the whole power supply to the Grand Stand fail.

"Just as the stand was starting to fill up with about 8,000 people it failed. No matter what we tried we just could not get the power to stay on - it kept tripping out.

"With a bit of luck and trial and error we got it working again until the end of the match but we got an electrical engineer out straight afterwards!"

Old & new

The Investec Media Centre: 'Not much spare room' Lord's is a great mix of old and new, from the Victorian Pavilion to the award winning, modern architecture of the Investec Media Centre. Diaper is clear which one he prefers:

"The Pavilion is great. You may think it would be difficult working on a listed building - that it might stop you changing things.

"It does but it makes it a clear line. There's lots of space on the top of the building where we can put some of our units and run cabling and things around the outside - the Pavilion is a great building to work on.

"The Media Centre looks fantastic but it can be a nightmare to work on. There's not a single spare inch of space so it can be quite tricky fitting kit in there. Even cleaning the windows - we have to get a specialist team in who abseil off it."

In the 21st century, how are Lord's adapting to the new pressures - things environmental concerns?

"We have increased our waste recycling from 14% to 46% - which we are very pleased with. We want to increase this even more and increase our landfill avoidance - so we can take the waste and turn it into fuel.

"Working with our waste contractors we could increase this to as high as 70% which would be a huge step forward.

"It's very important to us - it's not just platitudes because we should be 'seen' to be doing it.

"As it works out our recycling schemes actually end up costing us less - but if we pay the same or even a little more whilst reducing landfill then that's a huge plus for us.

"We've also recently done a lot of work on electricity monitoring. During the close season, like now, there are large sections of the Ground which are rarely used.

"Take the Grand Stand again as an example - we've reduced the power being used in that stand massively. Because we can monitor it more closely we could work out how to reduce it.

Grand Stand savings - now using much less power "Things like the catering freezers which are nearly empty during the close season. Working with the catering team we cleared them and turned them off. Things like that.

"We've added a lot of motion detectors to the lighting, so it only comes on if someone's there. Now people cannot leave the lights on by accident.

"That's reduced the power used in that one building by about 80%. That's a huge reduction in waste and obviously that cuts our electricity bill too!"

Like Head Groundsman Mick Hunt, Diaper is one of a select handful of staff that also live on-site at Lord's. So how does he 'get away from it all'?

"You don't." Diaper chuckles. "Take last weekend. The power suddenly went off in the Indoor School. I checked everything but couldn't get the system back on.

"Eventually, with our electrician Jason, we got it on again at about 11:30pm on Saturday. Then I ended up spending the Sunday with our electrical contractors re-building the switch.

"That was my weekend off! But it's all part of the job - I love it."