Pipelines specialist Fisher German has completed a three-year safety check involving pipelines. In the largest construction project in Europe; the £4 billion Terminal 5 Project and Heathrow Airport, London.
The Terminal 5 project includes a core terminal building, aircraft stands, two satellites, rail station and a control tower. When complete, Heathrow Airport will have the capacity to handle about 30 million additional passengers a year.
An essential part of the project was to safeguard their existing underground fuel pipelines that supply the airport, whilst the construction of new aircraft stands and taxiways continued on the surface. Damage to these pipelines would have inevitably resulted in shutting down the fuel supplies and potentially bringing the airport to a halt.
Working closely with British Airports Authority and their main contractors, safe methods of working were agreed at the design stage and procedures put in place to ensure these measures were implemented on site. A critical part of these procedures involved full time supervision of any excavation work being carried our in the vicinity of the pipelines.
Such works involved diverting the pipelines above a new cargo transfer tunnel and monitoring the installation of new electricity, water and communications services above and below the fuel pipelines.
All works were carried out successfully without any interruption to fuel supplies, damage to the fuel pipelines or injury to any personnel involved.
The new aircraft stands have already been delivered to Heathrow Airport and Terminal 5 is due to go live in March 2008. Fisher German is the leading firm of rural practice chartered surveyors within the UK, dealing with pipeline and utility consultancy and managing in excess of 4,000kms of buried high pressure pipelines.
The Company is currently involved with projects extending from Scotland through to Cornwall and has been successful in gaining contracts worth in excess of £6 million in the last 18 months.
For further information please contact our Southampton office on 02380 883150.
