Project moves on despite hitches

BANGALORE AIRPORT: 29 MONTHS TO GO
Project moves on despite hitches
The Times of India

Despite setbacks like rain, Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) chairman N R Narayana Murthy quitting and Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel seeking redesign, the news on Bangalore’s dream infrastructure project is good. The foundation for the first building of the international airport has been completed!

The landscape has changed dramatically at the airport site in Devanahalli: Construction equipment and activity is visible in every direction, excavating, pouring concrete, piling pre-cast slabs, setting up boundary columns.

Over 25 temporary buildings dot the site now, housing everything from the excavated mud to the posh site offices. With 900 workers on site, the whole area is buzzing with sound — the warning moan of sliding concrete slabs along rails, the putter of tractors transporting material, the screech of metal upon metal.

But the most heartwarming sight is the airport’s first building — the 1.6 lakh sq ft technical and administration building. Not only is the foundation complete but also pillars for the walls have come up, a good two months ahead of schedule.

“We are also on our toes to pour the concrete for the terminal building, which is supposed to happen only by January 5. All we need is three days of a dry spell — we will get cracking like Mahendra Singh Dhoni,’’ chief projects officer Sivaramakrishnan S Iyer told The Times of India.

Excavation for the terminal building’s foundation is continuing amidst rain. The boundary wall is also clipping along at a merry pace, with slabs being fitted into the columns in over three km.

The only work that has been hampered is the levelling and cutting of the four-km runway. Like every runway in the world, the Bangalore runway has a dip and a high, with a height difference of 12 meters from its lowest point to the highest one.

Due to rain, work on creating this runway profile has not been possible. BIAL has moved all workers from the runway-taxiway-apron area to the technical building construction. But, runway work is also ahead of schedule and the delay would made-up by working round the clock, as soon as rains stop, Iyer said. There are also glimpses of what the terminal building will look like. There are two design elements on the site. A mock-up of the terminal building column — complete with granite covering — was being put in place on Friday, while a curving mock-up of the roof is already evident.

Fourth month report card

Work on

• Technical and administrative building
• Terminal building excavation
• Boundary wall (3 km of 16 km completed)
• Redesigning the airport’s technical aspects and finances to upgrade passenger capacity to 11.4 million annually.

Temporarily halted

Runway (2.7 km of 4 km being formed)

Completed

• Site offices, workers quarters
• Material testing labs
• Pre-casting yard
• Machinery workshop