Catch-55

So what's the catch? Well for starters "west London" in this context means "the back of beyond". And if you choose to take up the offer of on-site accommodation in one of the purpose-built homes or in a caravan, you will be spending your days and many of your nights in a camp where your every movement is monitored by security personnel, and getting onto the site will be about as straightforward as boarding a plane.

When it planned T5, BAA was faced with the task of finding long-term accommodation for thousands of workers. The problem was that those workers had to be kept separate from the travellers and the freight flowing through the airport, and they would have to be continually monitored to make sure that none presented a terrorist threat.

The solution was the pharaonic one of putting up an army of workers in a purpose-built village. As John Stent, managing director of Terminal 5, puts it: "A planning application has been submitted for a temporary facility to provide accommodation for workers. The proposed development is to be located on a BAA-owned site in Bedfont Court [see map overleaf], and will have 600 bedrooms and space for 100 caravans."

This workers' compound will be, as far as possible, self-sufficient. According to BAA, it will include a restaurant, bar, games room, cybercafe and lounge. And the reason that it will be self-sufficient is that "this accommodation will be isolated from local communities". In fact, it is in a huge traffic island, surrounded by motorways. The workers' only way out will be to the main T5 site over a footbridge. This village is in addition to a 200-caravan site on the island, between the M25 and the A3044, that is already in use.

The obvious problem with this arrangement is a sociological one. The two other social settings in which this number of men are confined together for a long period – army camps and prisons – require an intensely regulated environment. But the inhabitants of those institutions have lost or given away some of their freedoms. Construction workers have not.

UCATT general secretary Brumwell says that discipline will be based on the carrot rather than the stick. "The lure of big money should stop workers from causing any big problems because they know that if they mess around they will get booted off the job and lose the money," he says. He adds, however, that that is likely that a specialist management-cum-security firm will police the workers' accommodation to reinforce discipline. "There will also obviously be a union presence on the project and in the accommodation centre areas."

In order to get to their place of work, the operatives will have to negotiate strict security control posts. There, a facial recognition system will be used to monitor them as they go on and off site. This uses software from US-based developer Visionics, and it is already in use elsewhere in the world, helping Israeli border guards to check Palestinian workers crossing into and out of the Occupied Territories. Closer to home, Newham council is using the system in conjunction with surveillance cameras to check the borough's streets for known criminals.

As well as determining that workers are who they claim to be, the facial recognition software will record their time and attendance to make sure that they earn every penny of that £55,000. Data from the system will be used to produce timesheets for site workers under a system developed by software producer Aurora with O'Rouke Group called TimeKeeper.

A Laing O'Rourke spokesperson confirmed: "Innovation is playing a major role with a number of new systems already in operation. This includes a facial recognition system for recording time on site and automatic payroll from output data."

This software will be installed over the next few months once a site entrance plaza has been completed. Other security measures include automatic vehicle identification and swipe cards to control the movement of personnel within E E the site. Card readers will also be installed on the buses carrying workers to and from the site.

Tight security is already in evidence. Airport police have begun mounting patrols and two of their cars are stationed outside the main site entrance. At a recent press conference, journalists were not allowed to walk around the site; instead they were driven in minibuses escorted by BAA officials, despite having visitor passes.

It is not just in security that Terminal 5 is being careful – workers are also required to detail their full medical history before beginning work. BAA says: "Those employed in safety-critical jobs are screened to ensure they are fit to do their job."

With so much of the terminal's budget going to the workforce, even more emphasis than usual is being put on the control of construction costs. Working with its framework contractors, BAA is attempting to drive down costs using value engineering and prefabrication. This concern for cost-effective construction is evident on some of the civil engineering works on the site. Steel reinforcement for some of the concrete works are being assembled off-site and slotted into place just before the concrete is poured.

A similar value engineering process is also under way on the terminal's roof. Rowen Structures has constructed a trail section of the steel roof support in its works. This will allow both the design and construction team to review the component's design and any construction issues arising from its assembly, to ensure the roof can be constructed as quickly and easily as possible.

It remains to be seen whether workers will fit together just as easily. How bearable this strange life is for them depends on their capacity for going without the pleasures of modern living, in return for a more-than-generous salary. Rather than an army camp or a prison, their situation is analagous to working on the world's largest oil rig.