Extending London City Airport: engineering space for aircraft to self-manoeuvre
The eastern apron development at London City Airport requires the construction of four additional aircraft stands and a taxiway. The runway is built on an old dock between two areas of water, and the increasing traffic means they’re running out of space to park aircraft. The space is very constrained so the development requires building on piled platforms extending from the dock.
My career path
After university, I worked as a graduate engineer at Atkins, doing a lot of work on airports. After I became chartered my work included ten weeks in Bahrain. My chartered status also allowed me to get a job abroad. While travelling in New Zealand a year later, I was able to work in Christchurch for nine months on a variety of airport projects including a new domestic terminal at Christchurch International Airport. When I returned to the UK I joined TPS as a senior engineer.
Once I joined my current company after some time in New Zealand, I was asked to join this project as I had experience working on a range of airport projects. This project is unusual as it combines two very different disciplines: airport design and building over water. Building aircraft stands and taxiways over water is far more complicated than building on the ground!
Communication and co-ordination
My role involves project co-ordination between the contractor and our in-house design team. This requires a lot of communication so I regularly attend site meetings with construction managers and design review meetings with the airport’s project team. The project is on a fast-track programme – planned to take only eighteen months from tendering to completion. The short timescale means that I need to make sure the designs progress quickly through the various stages. The fact that it’s a design-and-build contract helps to reduce the construction time, as we can design and build simultaneously. I make sure the designs are functional, cost-effective and buildable.
Innovative solutions
Another key role is to examine project issues and investigate solutions. Sorting out drainage was quite a challenge: we needed to get water from the deck into the existing drainage system. There are drainage pipes running within the suspended deck but the connection to the pipes in the ground must allow the deck to move with thermal expansion. We settled on using flexible pipework surrounded in a compressible material to accommodate the movement.
The airport also requested that the aircraft would be able to self-manoeuvre into and out of their parked positions, instead of needing to be pushed by a tug. This involved computer modelling of the aircraft tracking and input from the airport to develop the detail of how they will operate the area.
Still learning
This is a novel project and I’ve really enjoyed the technical challenge. I’ve learned a lot about design from the perspective of the contractor, as most of my previous work had been from the client side. I now focus on buildability and listen to feedback from the contractors about their preferred construction methods. It’s a different mindset.
Will Hellyer, CEng MICE, is a senior engineer at TPS (part of the Carillion Group). He graduated with an MEng in civil engineering with management from the University of Birmingham.
