Adelaide's new welcome mat taking shape

By John Satterley

Adelaide Airport, for years the poor cousin of Australian airports, is halfway into a $260m makeover that will see it the first in the south west Pacific with glass-sided aerobridges.

By November 2005, domestic, regional and international passengers will be serviced from one building able to process more than 3000 passengers/hour and up to 27 aircraft (including the 550-seat A380 Airbus) simultaneously through 40 common-use check-in desks.

A total of 14 aerobridges will enable passengers to disembark aircraft without having to walk on the tarmac or use stair trucks, and departure delays will be minimised with a high-speed baggage carousel. Larger tarmac areas will facilitate freight handling.

Hansen Yuncken won the contract to design and construct, with a guaranteed maximum price, by aligning itself with Adelaide Airport Ltd, the consortium that in 1998 purchased the airport's operating lease from the Federal Airports Corporation. A requirement of the tender was to commit to the construction of a new domestic and international terminal. Hansen and Yuncken formed a team whose design and construction proposal was presented with the AAL tender.

Design and construction team manager Peter Salveson says the contract strategy allowed the client (AAL) to commit to the project at an early stage of documentation with the guarantee of cost. Construction began in November last year.

The new terminal will have a gross floor area of 7.7ha and a footprint of 3.55ha. It will be steel framed, with suspended concrete floors on three levels, the top level for plant and the airport control room. An airside road underneath the transit lounges will separate passengers from the vehicular traffic needed to get a plane in the air. Escalators inside the building will automatically turn off when not in use.

Salveson was given the challenge of constructing the project while maintaining a fully operational international terminal building. The new terminal encroaches over the existing ITB approximately 11m and special provisions for staging works were called for.

All apron construction work was coordinated to ensure existing international terminal aircraft operations and aircraft using taxiways and runways were maintained. Many concrete shifts started at 5am due to the large slab sizes. Night shift work involved pouring concrete piles and footings.

Salveson says that if airport operational performance is not maintained during construction then planes will be diverted to other airports. For this reason all works that may affect existing operations are subject to risk assessment and all contractors are required to implement defined work method statements before work can start.

With security a big concern, security personnel guard all airside works. All workers are subject to site specific induction procedures prior to starting work.