ECITB - Terminal 5

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Engineering Achievements - Terminal 5

Terminal 5 An engineering achievement With the new opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow on March 2008, marks an amazing project which was completed on time and on budget. It is a remarkable feat of engineering achievement outlining the great engineering skill the UK contains. Designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership, Terminal 5 is the largest single-span building in the UK as large as Hyde Park. Construction started in September 2002, and in total took seven and half years to build costing £4.3 billion. Employed 6500 people Designed to cater for 30 million passengers annually and enable Heathrow to handle up to 90 million passengers a year and in 2005 was the largest construction project in Europe, employing some 6500 people. Striking Roof The main striving feature of Terminal 5 is the roof, consisting of arched steel rafters 39m above the ground. Due to Terminal 65 having nearby aircraft large cranes could not be used to lift them so an innovative big lift construction method was used. This involved lifted up the roof using strand jacks. New Transport Links To cope with the additional capacity of passengers, terminal 5, transports links have been extended to cope with the demand. Dedicated motorway spur has been built from the M25 and a new station Heathrow Terminal 5 station will bring passengers to and from the Heathrow Express train line and the Underground's Piccadilly Line. The Future With the completion of Terminal 5, Terminal 2 will be closed to allow the Heathrow East scheme to be built. This new terminal will be able to handle 30 million people and will hopefully be completed in 2012 ready for the London Olympics. Current proposals for the third runway to be be built north of the airport are underway, this would give the airport given greater capacity and competitive edge to still be the biggest airport in the world for years to come. Largest single-span building in the UK Employing some 6500 people. Used 80,000 tonnes of steel - with 17,000 tonnes in the roof of T5 alone. Completed on time and on budget. Large number of UK firms involved including Arul and Severfield-Rowen. The amount of earth shifted during construction of Terminal 5 would have filled Wembley Stadium one-and-a-half times. The terminal is designed to handle 35 million a year at capacity – equivalent to the population of Lincoln every day of the year. Sixty thousand people were involved in making the new terminal – enough to fill Arsenal's Emirates football stadium.