Airline Catering Facility

The client required a new operational airline catering facility which would be considerably more flexible than traditional catering units, and which could deal with  evolving change efficiently. It needed to be robust, due to the extremely high levels of vehicular movement throughout the facility on a daily basis, from thousands of airline carts through to forklifts, and it also needed to act as an exemplar for an ‘asset-light’ process flow.

The new airline catering facility was designed following extensive optimisation exercises which sought to reduce the historic complexity of large catering facilities. The process flow was analysed and the requirement reassessed from first principles, omitting everything which appeared to be superfluous and ironing out any bottlenecks in the system to make the process more efficient ergonomically.

The objective was to construct as little as possible, thus retaining optimum flexibility for a business which operates in a rapidly changing market. Each simplification in process resulted in a simplification in the building requirement, and a further reduction in the complexity of plant required. This created a virtuous circle which further improved both the initial cost of the unit and also its ongoing life cycle efficiency. 

A Schedule of User Requirements was created to enable the assessment of the specific performance requirement for each task in terms of area, functionality and services Departmental and inter-departmental flow paths were then added. 

The ergonomics of specific aspects of the process were looked at in detail, ranging from the optimisation of Inter-Departmental Process Flow and the Chill Chain to the detailed design of specific components such as Hygiene Stations and Compactors.

Resulting from the fundamental requirement to fully design and streamline the Architecture of the process before any building design was proposed, many instances arose where the clean re-ordering of the process itself gave a real operational benefit. This also reduced complexity in the final building envelope, thus generating further efficiencies in the construction process and in ongoing running costs. Robust integrated solutions with Engineered service performance requirements were allowed to drive the Architecture rather than the other way around.

Ultimately the solution became an elegantly resolved diagram with reduced physical building works. Internal enclosure was only created where there was a performance requirement from servicing such as steam containment or cooling, or for specific functions such as offices.

The client required a new operational airline catering facility which would be considerably more flexible than traditional catering units, and which could deal with  evolving change efficiently. It needed to be robust, due to the extremely high levels of vehicular movement throughout the facility on a daily basis, from thousands of airline carts through to forklifts, and it also needed to act as an exemplar for an ‘asset-light’ process flow.

The new airline catering facility was designed following extensive optimisation exercises which sought to reduce the historic complexity of large catering facilities. The process flow was analysed and the requirement reassessed from first principles, omitting everything which appeared to be superfluous and ironing out any bottlenecks in the system to make the process more efficient ergonomically.

The objective was to construct as little as possible, thus retaining optimum flexibility for a business which operates in a rapidly changing market. Each simplification in process resulted in a simplification in the building requirement, and a further reduction in the complexity of plant required. This created a virtuous circle which further improved both the initial cost of the unit and also its ongoing life cycle efficiency. 

A Schedule of User Requirements was created to enable the assessment of the specific performance requirement for each task in terms of area, functionality and services Departmental and inter-departmental flow paths were then added. 

The ergonomics of specific aspects of the process were looked at in detail, ranging from the optimisation of Inter-Departmental Process Flow and the Chill Chain to the detailed design of specific components such as Hygiene Stations and Compactors.

Resulting from the fundamental requirement to fully design and streamline the Architecture of the process before any building design was proposed, many instances arose where the clean re-ordering of the process itself gave a real operational benefit. This also reduced complexity in the final building envelope, thus generating further efficiencies in the construction process and in ongoing running costs. Robust integrated solutions with Engineered service performance requirements were allowed to drive the Architecture rather than the other way around.

Ultimately the solution became an elegantly resolved diagram with reduced physical building works. Internal enclosure was only created where there was a performance requirement from servicing such as steam containment or cooling, or for specific functions such as offices.