{"id":515221,"date":"2025-03-20T10:43:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T10:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=515221"},"modified":"2025-03-20T10:43:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T10:43:39","slug":"transforming-a-transport-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/project-reports\/transforming-a-transport-hub-20-03-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming a transport hub"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Project name:<\/strong> Bristol Airport Transport Hub
\nClient:<\/strong> Bristol Airport
\nMain contractor:<\/strong> Griffith Farrans JV
\nContract value:<\/strong> \u00a360m
\nContract type:<\/strong> NEC Option A
\nConcrete frame subcontractor:<\/strong> Statom
\nSteelwork subcontractor:<\/strong> Smyth Steel
\nMechanical & electrical subcontractor:<\/strong> Dodds Group
\nEngineering designer:<\/strong> Burroughs
\nArchitect:<\/strong> The Development Studio<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Bristol airport is one of the UK\u2019s busiest. Now its owners are embarking on an ambitious expansion plan that will improve facilities for its customers. CN checks in to see <\/strong><\/em>if there\u2019s anything to declare<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Bristol Airport, sitting a few miles out of the city within the county of North Somerset, can be viewed as something of a success story. Tracing its history back to its days as Second World War pilot training base RAF Lulsgate Bottom, it has witnessed soaring demand over recent years to become the UK\u2019s eighth largest airport by passenger volume. In 2023, almost 10 million passengers filed through security and passport control to be ferried out to flights to destinations across Europe and North Africa, making it the go-to airport for travellers from and to South West England and south Wales.<\/p>\n

Despite its success, the airport has struggled to shake off the side effects of its rather piecemeal development. Passengers have long grumbled about its offering to those arriving and departing, with car parking and lack of onward travel connections high on the list of frustrations.<\/p>\n

But now Bristol Airport is investing \u00a360m in a scheme that it hopes will help calm these frustrations and transform the airport\u2019s offering, along with providing facilities for an increase
\nin passenger numbers by a further two million per year.<\/p>\n

It has flown in joint venture firm Griffiths Farrans JV (GFJV) to navigate the delivery of the Transport Hub, a scheme that will provide a new public transport interchange, an additional multistorey car park, new customer waiting and rest facilities, an enlarged drop-off and pick-up area, as well as a glazed passenger link-bridge connecting the car parks and the terminal itself. It is Bristol Airport\u2019s largest capital investment project since 2000, when the airport opened a \u00a327m terminal building.<\/p>\n

Declan Doherty is contract manager on the scheme for GFJV and is overseeing a development that needs to be delivered with minimal impact to customers, neighbours and operations. \u201cIt is a challenging project,\u201d admits Doherty. \u201cWe have quite a small footprint of land in which we can operate and are trying to deliver this major scheme without having any negative impact on the airport\u2019s operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Challenging could be somewhat of an understatement. GFJV must construct a new internal road network, a four-storey car park providing more than 2,000 extra spaces and a top floor public transport interchange for buses and coaches, alongside a steel-framed passenger hub. Add in a 48 metre-long glazed steel pedestrian link bridge and it becomes clear why the JV is being meticulous in its approach for the project.<\/p>\n

The new car park \u2013 MSCP2, to give it its formal title \u2013 is under construction alongside the existing, similarly prosaically-named MSCP1. It is being built on a scrap of land that was once the airport\u2019s long-stay car parking facility \u2013 a surface car park that had become unfit for purpose. Here the GFJV team has been excavating and stockpiling the 200,000 tonnes of material arisings from the earthwork that has been carried out across the site. Like an enormous sand dune, the stockpiled excavated material \u2013 all of which will be reused in the project\u2019s landscaping \u2013 looms large over the site offices. \u201cThe batter faces on the stockpile get constantly surveyed and maintained as part of the temporary works package. It is important to manage it correctly,\u201d says Doherty.<\/p>\n

Most of the spoil stems from the excavation for the car park, although there are some \u2018airside\u2019 works that have been carried out \u2013 the excavation of services and existing stormwater drainage and ducts \u2013 using vacuum excavation techniques. GFJV has so far not struck any services.<\/p>\n

The car park itself sits on pad foundations with a raft over one corner. The GFJV team excavated down to underlying sand and rock, with fissures in the bedrock being filled with lean-mix concrete to bolster it where required.<\/p>\n

Change of plan<\/h3>\n

The team has veered away from initial plans in the car park structure itself. At the project\u2019s outset, the structural frame was to be of post-tensioned concrete design and constructed using traditional decking formwork. But with the early involvement of structural concrete frame specialist contractor Statom, this was soon tailored to help meet the demanding works programme and reduce the amount of time the site\u2019s three tower cranes would be tied up installing the in situ concrete columns. After careful consideration, the traditional in situ concrete column construction was switched into offsite precast concrete columns, supplied by Kerkstoel Group, with 50mm thick precast concrete flooring slabs acting as permanent formwork. These slabs are beefed up with 130mm of poured concrete to create a final slab thickness of 180mm across parking levels 1, 2 and 3. At level 4 this increases to a 250mm thickness to help support the additional loading of fully laden coaches and buses. The slabs are post-tensioned, with an initial tensioning after 24 hours and full tensioning taking place after three days.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad we stayed with the original design we would have had to have at least four crane visits to each column. Changing it to precast not only ensured we had the quality of finish we required but also meant we cut those crane visits down from four to just one for each column,\u201d explains Doherty.<\/p>\n

Those precast slabs were manufactured at 1.2 metres to ensure they could be delivered easily on standard-sized trailers and were all laid to 1:70 cross falls \u2013 enabling surface water to drain freely \u2013 and provide a minimum slab-to-soffit height of 2.2 metres. Over 45,000 square metres of precast slab will be installed across the car park.<\/p>\n

The floor-to-floor vehicle access ramps are cast in situ and the team has already broken through from the existing MSCP1 to provide seamless access at each level to the new car park.<\/p>\n

Staggered handover<\/h3>\n

The car park is set to be handed over on a floor-by-floor basis to enable passengers to utilise the new spaces as they come on stream. Level 4 will be the final level to be handed over.<\/p>\n

Presently it is at this level that the steel frame of the single-story Transport Hub is being craned into place. The longest steel beam in this building, which provides customer rest and refreshment facilities, is 16.5 metres. This is also the level where the scheme\u2019s most striking feature will sit: a 48 metre link bridge that skews across the North Side Road to provide a level walkway for passengers from the Transport Hub to the terminal building itself. It is being fabricated by specialist firm Smyth Steel and will be brought to site in two sections before being lifted into place using a 500-tonne mobile crane.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had initially thought about pre-glazing the bridge but the anticipated deflections during lifting were too high,\u201d explains Doherty. Instead, glass will be installed once the bridge is in place.<\/p>\n

There are landscaping works around the terminal building still to be completed. When it is fully handed over in summer 2025, the project will finally give Bristol Airport and its burgeoning passenger numbers the welcome \u2013 and send off \u2013 they deserve.<\/p>\n

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Civils keeps aviation flying<\/h3>\n

The new car park and transport hub at Bristol Airport will certainly be a massive boon to customers. Once completed it will offer covered, step-free access to the terminal building as well as improvements in vehicle traffic flow around the airport site itself.<\/p>\n

Transforming what was a single in-and-out access road, the new internal road network will provide access to traffic from the nearby A38 at its eastern entrance. Coaches, taxis and buses will split off and head across the newly-formed eastern approach ramp, directly to the Transport Hub at level 4. Cars will continue down North Side Road to access the new MSCP2 car park through the existing route. Traffic will then exit from the car park along a new road back to the A38 \u2013 effectively making the site a giant one-way roundabout.<\/p>\n

Where the eastern approach ramp meets the MSCP2 structure, huge precast concrete bridges designed to take the extra tonnage of the buses and coaches will be installed, where a 4 metre-high precast concrete crib retaining wall has been placed. This runs along the eastern and southern sides of the new hub.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been awkward. There are lots of service runs and old stormwater systems that we have had to work around but we have managed it successfully,\u201d says GFJV project manager Francis O\u2019Connell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Griffiths Farrans keeps it in the family<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a saying that familiarity breeds contempt, but that certainly doesn\u2019t seem to be the case at Bristol Airport. Both members of the joint venture team, Griffiths and Farrans, as well as material supplier Tarmac, come under the cloak of construction materials giant CRH and have grown accustomed to working with one another on other similar projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing part of the same group certainly helps,\u201d says Doherty. \u201cThe systems are the same and there is continuity there. We are all working together and understand the processes we have to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

By and large, it\u2019s a simple division of labour. Griffiths focuses on the civils side of the project and Farrans the structural side. Perhaps keeping everything in the family pays dividends, after all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Project name: Bristol Airport Transport Hub Client: Bristol Airport Main contractor: Griffith Farrans JV Contract value: \u00a360m Contract type: NEC Option A Concrete frame subcontractor: Statom Steelwork subcontractor: Smyth Steel Mechanical & electrical subcontractor: Dodds Group Engineering designer: Burroughs Architect: The Development Studio Bristol airport is one of the UK\u2019s busiest. Now its owners are …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82076,"featured_media":515236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[559,557],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n