Airports & Aviation
Runways, aprons and terminals — the heaviest pavements and the busiest buildings, behind one fence.
An airport is a roads job, a buildings job and a security job sharing one fence. Airside, the pavements take aircraft loads that make a motorway blush — the corridor earthworks and drainage that get you there are the shared transport methods, linked below. Landside and airside alike, everything works around aircraft movements and a security regime that shapes the programme as much as the weather.
The five guides in this sector follow the build order: runway and airside pavement construction, terminal buildings — shopping centres with aeroplanes attached — working airside in a live airport, airfield ground lighting and nav aids, and the hangars and cargo facilities on the support side. The generic corridor civils upstream link through to their canonical guides in the roads and rail sectors.
What does Airports & Aviation cover?
Process guides in Airports & Aviation
- Runway & Taxiway Pavement Construction — Building the strip itself — rigid pavement-quality concrete or thick-lift asphalt over a proven subgrade, textured and grooved for wet grip, with FOD discipline throughout and acceptance that ends at a friction survey.
- Airport Terminal Construction — The terminal: a long-span roof over a column-free hall, piers or satellites reaching for the stands, a baggage system threaded through the basement, and a building raised in two halves — airside and landside — that meet at the security line.
- Airside Works in Live Airports — Working beside aircraft that are earning money — passes, escorts and radio discipline, night possessions with a hard handback, FOD control as a way of life, and NOTAMs telling the world's pilots where you dug today.
- Airfield Ground Lighting & Navigational Aids — The airfield's nervous system — series circuits at constant current, inset and elevated lights, transformer pits and ducted cable, the control system in the tower, and the ILS and PAPI that only count once a calibration aircraft has flown them.
- Hangars & Cargo Facility Construction — The airfield's industrial estate — wide-bodied hangar spans with doors the size of a house, floors with pits and services for the jets inside, cargo terminals built around ULD systems and the cool chain, and the aprons and airside roads that feed them.
Shared methods used in Airports & Aviation
- Corridor Access & Enabling Works
- Survey Control & Ground Investigation
- Bulk Earthworks — Cuttings & Embankments
- Drainage & Utility Corridors
- Subgrade Preparation & Capping
- Sub-base & Base Construction
- Steel Frame Construction
- Roofing
- MEP First Fix
- Testing, Commissioning & Asset Handover
Part of the Transport Infrastructure group.