The Terminal 2 B Apron has been successfully completed on time and safely as part of Heathrow Airport’s new £2.5 billion Terminal 2 project.
The Ferrovial Agroman T2B team officially handed over the apron area to Heathrow on 6th February 2014 which consisted of the first two new taxiways in three years for the airport as well as 12 aircraft stands – four remote and eight pier served.
Ferrovial Agroman UK and Ireland Managing Director Ignacio Clopes said: “The T2B Apron team at Heathrow Airport have delivered an exceptional piece of infrastructure in the heart of the country’s busiest airport. This is an immense achievement that could only be reached through their exceptional team effort, innovative approach and attention to detail.”
Beginning works in April 2012, the project has been completed without a single reportable incident occurring, achieving an AFR of 0.00. Facing a number of challenges, the team have excelled in their work despite being the last project of the T2 programme to commence and therefore holding the highest risk in meeting the handover schedule.
Ferrovial Agroman also set two new concrete records at the airport: 2,600m3 machine laid in one continuous pour and 750m3 hand laid in one shift. A total volume of 115,000m3 wet lean and PQ concrete was poured for the project.
Championing a sustainable and environmentally responsible attitude, the T2B Apron team have also recycled over 230,000 tonnes of broken concrete, saving over 135,000kg of CO2 emissions.
T2B Project Manager Ignacio Chicharro said: “It was a challenging project. We shared a number of interfaces with the surrounding Principal Contractors which sometimes meant our project boundaries were changing on a daily basis. This forced us to be fully flexible in our approach and to be able re-plan activities as required to have minimal impact on our programme. This also created additional health and safety risks which had to be mitigated. Therefore achieving our delivery date without a RIDDOR is something the whole team is exceptional proud of.”
Planning was key to the delivery especially when taking into account the wider project users of the available concrete batchers and the limitations of material supply to the batcher. This required the team to make sure that services and subbases were finished on time to allow efficient delivery of the PQ, trying to make the most of good weather conditions and to give continuity to the resources deployed.
Passengers have already been landing and disembarking their aircraft via one of the four new remote stands since October 2013, the pier stands will start receiving their first passengers later this year.
Terminal 2 is set to open on 4th June 2014.
Editor’s Note
Ferrovial Agroman:
Ferrovial is the world’s leading investor in transport infrastructure, with revenues of £7bn and more than 80,000 employees in 15 countries. Its construction division, Ferrovial Agroman, manages major, complex, multi-disciplinary design and construction projects in international markets, in sectors including rail, highways, tunnels, ports and marine, aviation and energy. In London, its flagship projects include the Crossrail C300/410 Western Running Tunnels and Station Caverns, Crossrail C435 Farringdon Station, Heathrow’s new Terminal T2A and the Heathrow Post T5 Transfer Baggage Tunnel.
Heathrow Airport
As part of a £11bn airport development programme, Heathrow is replacing the old Terminal 2 (which stood for more than half a century before closing in 2009). The brand new building will reward flyers with an impressive new space, designed around the individual needs of the 21st century passenger. When it opens on 4th June 2014, the new Terminal 2 will serve 20m passengers a year. It will be home to STAR Alliance and Aer Lingus, germanwings as well as Virgin Atlantic’s domestic routes.
The new Terminal 2 has been designed with an aim to be as environmentally responsible as possible, with sustainability at the core of the programme. More than 95% of the buildings demolished to make way for the new terminal were recycled. In addition, the new Terminal 2 will be 40% more carbon-efficient than the previous building and extremely energy efficient; with biomass (wood chip) boilers, photovoltaic panels and a main cooling plant carefully chosen for its low global warming potential. Overall, Heathrow’s target is to recycle or compost 70% of airport waste by 2020.
