Modern Airport Terminal Construction Strategy

Introduction

As a result of Brexit, Ferrovial Airports is set to relocate its international head office to Amsterdam from the UK. The main reasoning behind this is so as to maintain the Ferrovial Airports holdings under the umbrella of the legislation of the European Union. Southampton, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports are owned by the Spanish infrastructure firm (Carrington, Perkins and Topham, 2018). The UK left the European Union without a deal. In the first 9 months of 2018, Ferrovial SA reported a 387 Million Euro-Net profit with a lot of growth in the traffic in the different Ferrovial Airports being witnessed (Ferrovial, 2018). As such, from a financial perspective, Ferrovial Airport is in a very good position to finance any projects it intends.

Construction of new modernized Airport terminals

Typically, the Airport Activation Workstream typically occurs concurrently with the planning, design, and construction work stream and also incorporates the tasks that the airport operator needs to accomplish so as to successfully open and also operate the new airport terminal facility.

The best way through which to carry on an Airport Activation Workstream project is done is by organizing it before or concurrently with the planning phase of the Planning Design Construction Commissioning Workstream and concluding with handover/static completion of the new airport terminal facility.

Over the years, the airport activation process has largely developed so as to successfully open new airport facilities. Even though opening new airport terminal facilities is the same as opening other mega projects like factories, pharmaceutical plants and hospitals, there is some uniqueness with opening new airport terminals because politics and politicians are many a time involved and it is a very public process with very many stakeholders and also very constrained time-wise.

Even though the Airport Terminal Facility Activation work stream and the Design Construction Commissioning work stream are independent, they are closely related (Saounatsos, 2009). During the planning and design phases, we will capture requirements from the activation team. Further, the capital projects delivery schedule will be coordinated with the airport terminal facility activation. Throughout the project, progress will be measured against the schedule. Our team will review the designs, bids (proposals) submissions from contractors and submission equipment’s so as to confirm that they are reflective of operational requirements and provide advice on any arising issues. This will be done concurrently with preparing for trials, preparing operation plans, and developing programs for training and recruitment.

There are two project delivery mechanisms that could be used in this project. They include;

Design-Bid-Build whereby a price that is fixed will be established once the design has been completed. In instances where the functional criteria is not appropriately defined and changes are bound to happen during the process of construction, this process is most appropriate. After various scopes of work have been bid and built, the designs are completed (Airports of the future, 2018).

Bid- Design – Build whereby before the design is complete, a fixed price is normally established. This process is usually most appropriate in those instances where functional criteria are well defined and there exists no possibility that they will change in the course of the process of construction.

For a project as big as the construction of the terminal, it would be prudent to incorporate combinations of these two processes. The scopes of work that need a large number of end-user requirements, on a Design-Bid-Build basis, should be awarded at the end of the design while scopes of work that can be defined accurately and consequently contracted for at the programming stages end or even early during the stage of design will be awarded on a Bid-Design-Build basis. While the Bid-Design-Build approach helps in reducing financial risks, it also makes management of changes difficult.

In the initial stages of the project, our team will capture requirements, coordinate the schedule and submit designs. During the construction phase, the airport terminal facility activation team will regularly visit the site so as to observe the facility and also familiarize themselves with the project. The following stage will involve reviewing and commenting on the designs and contractors will also give their submissions. The final stage will involve training, testing, commissioning and trials of familiarization. Our team will witness the testing and commissioning of the new project and will work with teams from the Airport to finalize the program of training.

While the works of construction will be approaching completion, the team in charge of activation will commence trials of the new airport terminal facilities and handover plans will also begin. When the handover will have been completed, our team will have achieved the new facilities static completion. At this point even though the terminal won’t be operational, all systems in the terminal will be working. After the handing over, the team charged with the airport facility terminal activation will complete readiness and transition and further facilitate the achievement of operational readiness.

Conclusion

Large complex projects most of the times have long durations during which technology, functional criteria, staff and business processes change. The result of this is that facilities that are new are often received by staff that had very little involvement initially in the establishment of the functional requirements, little involvement in the design and subsequent construction and may have adopted new business processes and new technologies since the assembling of functional criteria (Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott, 2017). The best way of dealing with this problem could be mitigated by keeping the team involved with airport operations throughout the project's delivery. The best way to achieve this is through completing designs before the processes of bidding and assigning airport operations staff to the delivery team of the project, establishing an activation program that is robust and delaying decisions on procurement to the last possible minute.

References

Campante, F. and Yanagizawa-Drott, D., 2017. Long-range growth: economic development in the global network of air links. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), pp.1395-1458.