Destination: choice

Gatwick Airport never sleeps. With operations of one form or another taking place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the airport has the worlds busiest single-use runway, with up to 55 planes taking off every hour, and more than 34m people passing through every year. Delivering projects at the facility is extremely challenging.

With a vast portfolio of projects and programmes under way, the task of implementing and tracking them falls to Derek Hendry, who, in 2011, joined Gatwick as construction director. Derek is fully aware of the scale of his task and the scope of Gatwicks vision.

At Gatwick, every decision taken is based on our goal of being Londons airport of choice. Our plan is to build more than 214m of capital investment in this financial year and in this, theres a small number of large, challenging projects and a large block of minor ones. The difference here is some of our smaller projects are still substantial a minor project can be 5m and very challenging.

Because Gatwick is a big operation, projects are split into separate areas for efficiency airfield, terminal buildings and elsewhere on the estate. Derek explains: Terminal building projects are more challenging as they impact on our operation. Youve got the public to think about which is key but also there is a large number of stakeholders. Security issues are huge in an airport, dealing with the UK Border Force, the Department for Transport and the police. Youve then got 90 airlines and their support so youve got a lot of people to consult with before you actually do anything.

In this always-live environment, the team has to know the number of passengers that will be coming through the airport, particularly those into the departure lounge, and at what times. As Derek explains, this data determines the best period to work: Overnight is the best time for working but still very challenging. Winter nights are typically quieter but summer can see many aircraft using the runway at night.

Last year we resurfaced the runway between 21.30 and 05.30 and some nights more than 100 aircraft landed and took off on the site, so that demonstrates the kind of complexity we deal with.

Identifying the ideal time to work is crucial, and a good example of the meticulous planning and front-end preparation needed to succeed in an airport environment. The slightest change can severely affect operations.

Success at the airport is planning, planning and more planning and once you make the plan, stick to it. We cant change course due to knock-on consequences. If you do, you could really upset the whole operation.

Flight support
Among Dereks team are 20 project managers and alongside each of them sits an operational sponsor and a capital development manager who will support early stage planning, making sure the right stakeholders are involved and consider the risks and issues.

Derek says that a fast turnaround on operations is crucial. Its really about competing and the thing I drive with my team is that our job is to be faster and more efficient than the competition because we can deliver projects more efficiently.

Two hundred construction staff are employed on-site, 94 of which are direct employees. In striving to work faster and more efficiently, the Gatwick way is to split up the disciplines to get the most out of the team. A key focus has recently been on field engineering, investing in 50 field engineers who look after safety, quality and driving productivity on site to make work easier.

Gatwick can be a challenging place to work in, says Derek. There are lots of permits and security passes to get and people are always stopping your work. The field measures are there to dissolve some of that so that the jobs can get done.

While passengers are a constant focus of projects, a bigger challenge is engaging with airlines. Gatwick is a regulated business and is very structured in how it engages airlines and gets projects signed off which is just as important to focus on.

We have to focus on the needs of our passengers ultimately, but between us are the airlines and weve got to make sure we support their businesses to help them grow and be efficient. Weve got to try and do that in a non-biased manner because different airlines have different requirements, just as passengers do.

Research is vital to success. Gatwicks product development team studies other airports and how it ranks against them. The team investigates what passengers are looking for to enhance their airport experience and have even taken into account what they want in their toilets when refurbishing the south terminal. The toilets were about looking at what airports dont do very well and seeing if we could come up with something different.

Decreasing defects
To continue to strive for success, Derek and his team look at their own work on a regular basis. A toll-gate process is in place to formally review performance. They also revisit product development and use the results to improve delivery on future projects. This lessons learnt approach has been key in Gatwicks success rate among the standard deliverables 90 per cent of projects are being delivered on time and within cost, and health and safety at the airport is well ahead of industry benchmarks.

We went 14 months between February last year and April this year without a single report of accidents on our construction sites. Thats a credit not just to our team but the supply chain too as it focuses on safety all the time.

The last 19 months has even seen Derek wage his own personal war against snagging defects on completed projects. Unhappy with the industry accepting projects as complete when further work is required to correct defects, he has a quality manager on board and a campaign to make sure processes are done right first time so contractors deliver defect-free projects. Its a campaign that is already seeing results. 

When I joined Gatwick, the north terminal extension opened with thousands of defects. This year, we are starting to see products opening with far fewer and some even with zero defects and we are continuing to drive this.

Derek has spent the majority of his career in the port sector. Qualifying as a quantity surveyor, he worked at an offshore engineering company before working for BAAs Scottish airports. It was during his time at Aberdeen Airport when Derek moved into project management, before becoming head of development in Glasgow Airport and then development director at Edinburgh Airport. He joined Peel Ports in 2008 as the group capital projects director, leading the development of the Port of Liverpool and Manchester Ship Canal.

Not content with the on-going success of projects at Gatwick, Derek is quick to say he has more work to do and his sights are firmly set high.

Weve got a destination zero campaign, so thats zero injuries and zero defects, and my aspiration is to hand over all our projects with this. I think if you do that, to some extent, deliverables like cost and time take care of themselves.

This article first appeared in Project magazine. APM members can read all feature articles from Project magazine over recent years by accessing the Project magazine archive.

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