Fulton Hogan

CATEGORY 2: Projects with a value between $1 million and $10 million

Landing safely and on time

Last year Auckland Airport faced a problem. Its busiest period – referred to as the ‘Northern Winter Schedule’ – was looming with the New Zealand summer. Forward flight schedules coming into the airport from different airlines made it apparent to the client that it was short of aircraft parking spaces. Compounding the issue was that a number of airlines had added Auckland to their routes at the last minute and/or upgraded aircraft to larger capacity planes. With the 30 busiest days of the schedule starting in December and running to the end of February additional parking was required by December 1. CATEGORY The project was awarded to Fulton Hogan 2 with a value of $6 million. Normally a project of this nature would have an allowance of three months for design, two months for procurement, two months mobilisation and around four months for construction – 11 months in total. It was clear from the outset this was not going to be a typical construction project and it would require consummate collaboration, advanced riskmanagement strategies, specialist heavy duty pavement construction techniques and total collaboration between the contractor, client and designer. Detailed daily planning would be required to meet the demanding site, regulatory specifications and the deadline date of December 1, and it was already mid-September when the project was allocated.

Construction of hardstands and associated civil infrastructure was achieved with a 24/7 operation maintained by two high productivity excavation crews (subcontracted) and two in-house pavement construction crews airside at Auckland International Airport.

Mobilising within five days from the contract award and with design not yet complete, more than 100 Fulton Hogan staff were involved. As the company says, by “living and breathing the project” they finished the project a day early.

Says the client, Auckland Airport, “Our level of satisfaction was huge – this is probably the best project I have ever been involved in. Our expectations were exceeded, the deliverables were well defined, communications were always there, and we had the area available prior to December 1.” l