Key takeaways
197
m long pier bridge linking to North Terminal
11
aircraft stands within satellite building
1m
hours worked with 100% safety record
- 73% of Pier 6 built using offsite prefabrication, hugely reducing airport closures and revenue loss that would’ve resulted from in-situ construction.
- Bridge was a better solution than a tunnel, which would have meant disposing of 81,000 tonnes of earth.
- 10,000 journeys between terminals reduced through transport rationalisation scheme.
Gatwick Airport is the sixth busiest international airport in the world, and is the world’s busiest airport featuring a single runway operation.
The Pier 6 development at Gatwick was built as part of expansion plans to increase the capacity of the airport's North Terminal. Mace managed the construction of the new satellite building housing 11 aircraft stands and a 197m long pier bridge linking it to the North Terminal building.
The pier bridge spans a live taxiway and had to be sufficiently wide and high enough to allow an aircraft the size of a Boeing 747-400 to pass underneath. A landmark project, it is the first of its kind at any airport in the UK, and the largest development since the North Terminal opened in 1988.
The team led an innovative approach to this project, involving extensive off-site fabrication. In fact, 73% of Pier 6 was built using prefabricated elements and components, maximising the benefit of pre-assembly techniques. The pier connector was constructed off-site to ensure minimum disruption to airport operations, construction in-situ would have closed the taxiway for more than six months, resulting in a huge financial impact to BAA through loss of revenue.
