Heathrow Airport Essay

The list for recent engineering marvels in the UK’s air travel industry perhaps ought to mention the expansion as a major project. The mega infrastructure status of the Heathrow Airport, involving Terminal 5 project targeted additional capacity for the airport to reach the 35 million passengers mark annually. Built before the current air travel engineering and related technologies, Heathrow has been transformed in bits over the years, to take up the obstacle of handling air travel demand. As Brady and Davies (2010) observed, the airport has over the years found it inevitable to accommodate bigger aircraft models witnessed for this age and civilianization. “Here was a mega- project that was on schedule and on budget since construction had begun, bucking all the trends of previous mega-projects...” (Brady and Davies 2010, p. 151)

In terms of innovativeness, the bulk of the project included several innovative construction and safety installations to match with the best standards in the world. At the scale of £4.3 billion, the stature and the 19-year duration of the Terminal 5 project exceeded ordinary mega projects, making the project one of the biggest across industries (Brady and Davies 2010). Some of the project improvement areas targeting travel experience included the following innovative components.

According to Coop et al. (2007), the Heathrow Terminal 5 mega project had to incorporate huge runway reconstruction component for improved traffic handling. Using modern technology, the construction required advanced assessment of the runway foundation to ensure lasting engineering works. Perhaps the most outstanding innovation noted by the authors refers to the investigation of runway stability attributes, through elaborate tests ...

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... the allocated budget but also saved public money. “T5 is already a testament to the skill and hard work of the thousands of people, including architects, planners, construction workers, airport and airline staff, who have together made the building happen,” (Brady and Davies 2010, p. 152). As mentioned, the involvement of government agencies and the highest office in the country facilitated security in securing funding needs of the megaproject (Fugeman et al. 2008). Involvement of efficient integrated management systems, the T5 project saved up to £200 million. Integrating every project component ensured that nearly every component was delivered in time, with only a small fraction of incompleteness reported at the time of launch. When obstacles emerged, the T5 integration score enabled the management to bring the operations of the airport into control within hours.