BAA, the world’s biggest airport operator, is to spend more than £3 billion upgrading Heathrow over the next ten years. The spending is part of a drive to modernise the world’s busiest international airport and will include the cost of expanding Terminal 3 for the giant Airbus A380.

The huge investment programme will be implemented separately from the £4.2 billion cost of building Heathrow’s Terminal 5. The money will be spent on an “extreme makeover” of the airport, which began in the 1940s as a small grass airfield. BAA said that the investment was designed to improve the operational efficiency of Heathrow and the competitiveness of its airlines.

The capital investment programme includes a £450 million upgrade to Terminal 3 to prepare for the arrival of the A380, the world’s biggest passenger aircraft; of that amount, £100 million will go towards four new aircraft stands to accommodate the A380’s huge wingspan.

The spending at Heathrow forms part of a £6.8 billion investment programme at BAA’s three London airports. Of the £6.8 billion, an estimated £2.2 billion will be spent on Terminal 5 in the next ten years. With money already spent, this will take the cost of Terminal 5 to £4.2 billion.

BAA is also proposing to spend £685 million at Gatwick and £550 million at Stansted. In total, the operator will spend more than £1 million a day on reconfiguring and improving its airports over the next ten years. BAA claims that, as a result, it is the largest private-sector construction client in the UK.

Because its airports are open 24 hours a day, managing the construction programme is an immensely complex task. At Gatwick, for example, BAA has just completed construction of the world’s largest air passenger bridge, Pier 6. The bridge was manufactured off-site and had to be wheeled into place overnight to avoid disruption. It is 197 metres long and included 3,870 cubic metres of concrete.

Richard Petrie, technical director at BAA, said that in order to manage its large construction programme efficiently, the company wanted to challenge its construction suppliers to employ best practice and lift standards.

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