Heathrow's high-tech Terminal 5 prepares for take off

A sewage treatment centre is an unlikely site to build a new airport, or any other building for that matter. But such a spot serves as the foundation for Heathrow Airport's new Terminal 5 (T5).

Tony Douglas, MD of BAA T5, says: "It was the original brown-field site. T5 for BAA is a very big project - it's the gateway to London."

Douglas and his team say they have completed 73 per cent of the £4.2bn development, which is tipped to be the largest construction project in Europe. So far, along with building the bulk of the 400m-long main terminal (T5A), 7,000 on-site staff have diverted two rivers, bored 13.5km of tunnels and laid four train tracks for the Piccadilly Tube line and Heathrow Express.

All of this, Douglas promises, will be completed by 04:00 on 30 March 2008 and will accommodate 35 million passengers per year - half of the 70 million that use the existing four terminals. BA will be the primary tenant.

Douglas adds: "The character of the space is that of the Heathrow we would like to have in the future. Once we've opened T5, we'll look to redevelop the rest of the terminals to this standard or above."

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T5A, the first building scheduled for completion in 2008, is currently a massive concrete shell. On site, everyone is dressed in luminous yellow coats, white construction helmets and goggles, and the walls are covered in health and safety posters. It's hard to imagine that in two years' time baggage will be zooming along conveyor belts at 10m per second as it is automatically plucked for its destination.

One company working on the technical infrastructure within the shell is telco NTL, which has laid 2,500m of network cables around the site. By the time T5 is finished it will contain £250m worth of IT equipment.

Nick Gains, head of systems for BAA, says: "Information flow is critical to passenger flow in an airport. The slightest disruption can cause unusual knock-on effects. Even a modest drop in the flow of taxis can cause a queue on the M25. All these things have hidden technology behind them."

T5A, which will accommodate 100 retailers, will feature a massive wireless network as well as a converged IP network for CCTV, a telephony system for 1,500 phones, building management and security systems and a private mobile phone network.

The decision to build a private mobile phone network will ensure widespread access across the terminal, according to Jim Read, director of building and IT at integration company Arup, which is working on T5's tech infrastructure.

He says: "We don't want to leave this to the public network providers. T5 will take control of these and we will rent them out to operators. It's a good revenue stream but that's another point. We want 100 per cent coverage."

Although construction for T5 began in 2002, one of the toughest jobs BAA's Gains faces is putting the IT systems in place by his September 2007 deadline - six months before the terminal opens, to allow time for testing.

Long-term projects, he says, present a great challenge in balancing timeframe and budgets with the evolution of IT.

Gains says: "I don't want any unproven technology. It's hard when you're in charge of a large project. It's [about] keeping a balance of how we merge innovation and how we manage risk."

He adds that T5's IT systems "represent the largest risk to the project".

Gains explains: "Information technology increases the possibility of failure. We are working hard to de-couple all of the horrible interdependencies."