Ground work for airport project begins

Ground work for airport project begins
Deccan Herald

Although the actual work on the airport has not yet begun, work on the preliminary and enabling works are said to have.

The two modified cargo container boxes that serve as site offices, the few scattered shacks and lone crane at the site of the Bangalore International Airport are hardly suggestive of the explosion of activity that the 4,000-odd acres is bound to witness as work picks up steam.

Work on the Rs 1,411-crore airport itself may not have begun, but work to begin the airport work has. And, as official sources explained to Deccan Herald, there are a host of these preliminaries — or ‘enabling works’ — to be attended to.

To start off, they need proper site offices, a conference room for the officials to confer, and a canteen.

These are expected to be up in less than a month. The workers, who bear the brunt of the hard work that lies ahead, have to be parked somewhere and fed. Facilities for some 3,000 of them — the estimated peak requirements — are being readied.

Concrete plans

A quarry on the site will provide all the stone needed for ‘aggregates’ — pieces of stones of varying diameters that will be used in the construction.

Steel structures that will make up the ‘crushers’ are being brought in, as will the rest of the parts. When ready, the crushers can churn out about 300 tonnes of aggregates.

Testing laboratories will check the entire chain, from source to the finished product, for size and strength. Storage for the crushed aggregate will be set up, as will a ‘batching plant’ to churn out the mixed concrete.

Fuel storage facilities are needed, and so too mechanics’ units to keep all the machinery in good condition.

And a diesel generator to power the initial part of the project. A network of service roads will be laid (the scale can be imagined from the fact that the perimeter wall alone is 21 kilometres in length). The roads will not be permanently asphalted, but will be hard surfaced nonetheless, in anticipation of the rains.

A good sign

The main work will start only after the financial closure of the project. There are two issues, in the main, that have to be sorted out: the agreement between the stakeholders has to be renewed, and the bank guarantee of Rs 42 crore – for the State’s share of Rs 350 crore – will have to be readied.

And when can an international airport of recognisable shape and size be expected? The target, as of now at least, is 33 months, starting from when financial closure happens.