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Mobilising the aviation sector for success

Is there place for an Airport Development Group to champion and drive the sector forward? The industry believes there is. Antony Oliver reports.

Regardless of the on-going post Davies Commission Heathrow vs Gatwick debate, the long term challenge facing the sector is to ensure that its supply chain is in shape and prepared to meet the predicted uplift in workload across the UK airport network.

As a recent Infrastructure Intelligence round table discussion on airport development heard, that will mean the sector raising its game to design and construct new world beating infrastructure as it helps the UK to succeed in an increasingly competitive global aviation market.

Deep collaboration will be essential with the key to success clearly resting on engaging the entire supply chain of clients, contractors and consultants down the tiers and industry representative groups.

“We need some sort of airport development representative body of our supply chain,” Ian Ballentine, Heathrow

“This is an opportunity for the airports development sector as we have a large volume of work in our sights,” said Heathrow executive procurement director Ian Ballentine. “The key is to be able to corral that opportunity through conversations with the supply chain.”

However, given the massive investment now seen across all sectors of infrastructure, Ballentine warned that if the aviation sector failed to pull itself together with a unified supply chain, other better prepared sectors could steal a march to drive and focus limited supply chain resources away from airport development, leading to cost increases, delivery delays and a loss of confidence in the sector.

“We need some sort of airport development representative body of our supply chain,” asserted Ballentine.

“First to lobby government with some weight to represent the aviation supply chain and ensure that it is not pushed down compared to other sectors,” he added. “But the other side is to help influence clients and drive better procurement, design and delivery. 

The proposal, loosely titled an “Airport Development Group”, Ballentine suggested, would stand above short term political decisions and act to meet needs of the sector.

“Irrespective of the Davies decision we need a body that can represent the supply chain as a whole and lobby as a collective group,” he said. “It would get the clients listening but also put weight behind the supply chain - not just for client organisations but also with government.”

An Airport Development Group could provide representation for the sector and create a single voice, able to lobby government but also airport operators over issues such as the need for workbank visibility, safety and measures to boost investment in resources for the future of aviation related infrastructure.

“The whole binary Davies choice is something of a distraction here and should not really interfere with the larger discussion," Piers Warburton, Gatwick

Ballentine drew comparison to the rail sector which used the resources of the Rail Industry Association (RIA) to represent and challenge the supply chain and provide a political weight to really influence both government and client thinking / policy.

Gatwick director Piers Warburton agreed that establishing an overarching industry body would be a very effective way to overcome “some very significant bumps in the road ahead” as he put it, as the sector wrestles with the differing commercial and political pressures facing large global, medium sized international airports and small regional facilities.

“The carriers are currently disproportionately important in the UK aviation debate, especially in London,” said Warburton pointing out that the industry really had to collectively raise its gaze beyond the short term domestic arguments over airport planning towards the global opportunity.

“If it were possible for the aviation development community to better organise itself I think that would be a significant benefit,” he said. “The whole binary Davies choice is something of a distraction here and should not really interfere with the larger discussion. We have carriers, particularly the Middle East, with very ambitious plans for their airlines and for their airports. They are a formidable influence on global aviation and London aviation in particular.”

“We are having a very local debate about Gatwick and Heathrow but I agree that we should lift our eyes and look beyond our boundaries to the development of the Middle Eastern carriers," Dervilla Mitchell, Arup

Designers and contractors around the table agreed that while they were ready and willing to take on the expected UK airport development workload, the global nature of the market meant that any sector representative body would have to look outwards from the UK to find examples of best practice. 

Arup director Dervilla Mitchell said that while the UK industry had evolved in terms of its appreciation of global client needs, it still had a way to go.

“We are having a very local debate about Gatwick and Heathrow but I agree that we should lift our eyes and look beyond our boundaries to the development of the Middle Eastern carriers,” she said. “They are going to be a huge challenge to our airlines and to our market here and we need to be thinking collectively about how to respond to that.”

Mitchell accepted that while the sector had moved on from just talking in engineering disciplines to become companies who really understood the operations of airports, a new representative body would help to drive home this new need and help look beyond the UK to appreciate and respond to trends and help the industry to work more closely together.

“It is a language that we have had to learn but I think that we are better placed now to address the challenges that our clients may put in front us,” she said. “We need to continue to evolve.”

“The risk is that we will continue to do the same old things and that we are not challenging each other enough to improve,” Phil Wilbraham, Heathrow

Mott MacDonald aviation director Paul Fairbairn also felt the industry was ready to respond not least as “around the world we punch above our weight”. But he felt that a UK Airport Development Group could help to galvanise the UK market behind the global challenge.

“We are on a journey together and I hope that we are already making huge leaps forward,” he said. “There is a revolution going on in terms of technology and airports will look different in the future. We see immense innovation going on but there is still great untapped opportunity.”

For Heathrow development director Phil Wilbraham this need to innovate was the critical factor in how a new representative body could really help the airport development community better organise itself to prepare for the inevitable growth in workload.

Specifically, Wilbraham’s question was how the sector could work together over the next few decades to boost productivity and drive efficiency as it tackles the boom in workload driven by the UK’s need to meet its runway capacity shortfall.

“The risk is that we will continue to do the same old things and that we are not challenging each other enough to improve,” he said.

“We have a supply chain at Heathrow that has been quite consistent over a long period of time but we are now going to a stage where that workload is going to grow quite fast and by quite a lot so we are going to need to perform on a different scale to the past,” he explained. “If we are not careful we will try to deliver that workload with the same old tricks that we have used over the last 10 or 15 years. If we do that we will come up with the same answers. But I think that we can do a lot better.”

“It is vital that we understand clients’ needs and challenges and we are very keen to be engaged in discussions at the appropriate time,” Andrew Nash, Balfour Beatty

The goal, explained Wilbraham, was to get the right people into the discussion – the tier 2s and tier 3s – to drive innovation and produce infrastructure that would serve customers and passengers better and cost less to operate and maintain. 

Contractors around the table welcomed any initiative that brought them into the airport development conversation earlier.

“It is vital that we understand clients’ needs and challenges and we are very keen to be engaged in discussions at the appropriate time,” said Balfour Beatty’s Andrew Nash. “I suspect that contractors will be keen and ready to be involved with any new sector group.”

Around the table:

 Jas Basi, CBI

 Ian Ballentine, Heathrow Airport

 Julian Francis, ACE

 Paul Fairbairn, Mott MacDonald

 Paul Jackson, NG Bailey

 Dervilla Mitchell, Arup

 Richard Matthews, Arup

 Duncan McIndoe, Turner &    Townsend

Andrew Nash, Balfour Beatty

Nelson Ogunshakin, ACE

Antony Oliver, Infrastructure Intelligence

Robbie Owen, Pinsent Mason

Geoff Smith, EY

John Turzynski, Arup

Adam Tuke, CECA

Huw Thomas , Foster and Partners

Piers Warburton, Gatwick Airport

Phil Wilbraham, Heathrow Airport

However, it was the ability of an Airports Development Group to champion a longer term view that was the critical factor for Foster and Partners partner Huw Thomas.

“But there is also potential to ask where do we want to be in 30 years or beyond – which the Davies Commission hasn’t been able to do – and to map out from global experience what might be happening and get ourselves a bit more prepared,” he said.

“I also suspect that there are opportunities around interfaces particularly with regional airports and to help work out how government transport policy fits into the wider policy picture,” he said. “Maybe with a stronger voice industry could interface with some of the critical decisions that would allow capacity to increase. We could lead that conversation and take leadership on multi-modal connectivity which many smaller airports would struggle with alone.”

Creating a sector body to help set the long term development strategy and policy was seen as crucial, particularly now that the UK National Infrastructure Commission was up and running and pressing forward with work to establish the National Needs/Infrastructure Assessment.

“It is crucial that this sector has a strong input into that,” said Pinsent Masons partner Robbie Owen, who worked with Sir John Armitt on his original plans for the Commission.

“However, when we get a decision [from government on airport expansion] the real job for an industry voice is to plug into DfT and other government policy,” he added. “All sorts of other policy announcements will start to flow and I think that there is a role for an industry group to make a strong combined representation on how that policy should develop.”

ACE chief executive Nelson Ogunshakin pointed out that any new body would most likely be best launched out of existing organisations.

“What matters most is leadership, consistency of message and true representation,” he said. “There are already a number of organisation out there but as we move from debate over the Davies report to operation and execution there is a gap to create a platform to engage and to allow a single point of contact – there is nothing as bad as too many voices.”

The way forward

“Any new group has got to have clarity around what it has to achieve and it must be focused. Does it create benefit for the client organisations as a whole? Does it create benefit for the supply chain organisations across the split of first and second tier suppliers? Does it create benefit for Britain as a whole? We need to decide what is the mechanism or model that we think would enable it to best operate, how would it work and how could it be funded; what are the first campaign areas to target and what is the model to make it work?” Ian Ballentine, Heathrow

If you would like to contact Antony Oliver about this, or any other story, please email antony.oliver@infrastructure-intelligence.com.