One for all

This may be Europe’s largest construction project, but that has not stopped the services teams from producing some innovative solutions, often under tough conditions and enormous time pressure, as the feature on page 24 reveals.

However, it is worth remembering that the team’s achievements owe a great deal to the vision of client BAA. It set out to create a collaborative environment for its supply chain, to foster integration and innovation, and it appears to have worked. While others in the industry talk of the need to innovate, at Terminal 5, they are already doing it. By utilising an integrated design team, more than 60% of the building’s services will be pre-assembled off site, while the use of a single virtual model has helped prevent coordination problems by allowing construction to be planned in advance.

Fundamental to the project’s success is the Terminal 5 agreement. Under this innovative contract, BAA has agreed to carry the risk on the project in exchange for a commitment from all its contractors to share information and knowledge with each other, as the feature on page 36 explains.

It would be naïve to assume this site is without its problems; if there is one dark cloud on the horizon, it is the issue of the M&E workers’ negotiations over travel pay (see news page 6). But on this project, when bad weather delayed construction of the terminal’s basement by 14 weeks, the teams simply collaborated to pull the programme back on track.

If there is one core message that emerges from this project, it is how much everybody stands to gain from working as a properly integrated team – from the individual fitter through to the client, which ultimately stands to gain a world-class terminal completed on time and to budget. Now BAA has created the template, the onus is on the industry to use it as a starting point for other projects – that way there will be many more projects for us to shout about.

Andy Pearson, editor