Airline Catering Facility Refurbishment

The client needed to adapt a large legacy airline catering facility of approximately 16,800 sqm to accommodate a substantially different process requirement whilst the existing facility remained operational.

The focus for the design involved the analysis of the changing requirements of the process, and where departments appeared to be under-utilised or inefficient from a layout perspective. This was then looked at in detail and the process flow reassessed from first principles to iron out any bottlenecks in the system and to make the new process work more comfortably within the existing constraints of the facility. The design optimisation was constantly cross-checked from an operational perspective, resulting in an evolutionary defragmentation process which consolidated and condensed the operation, thus releasing more capacity.

The refurbishment involved a carefully choreographed sequence of 36 simultaneous live projects whist the facility itself remained operational. Design works were therefore carefully story-boarded to meet the evolving project sequencing, with each sub-project having cause and effect assessment relative to associated projects and areas prior to resolution. One of the most complex areas was the Hot Kitchen, where the whole kitchen was completely upgraded with a significant increase in capacity and efficiency.

The client needed to adapt a large legacy airline catering facility of approximately 16,800 sqm to accommodate a substantially different process requirement whilst the existing facility remained operational.

The focus for the design involved the analysis of the changing requirements of the process, and where departments appeared to be under-utilised or inefficient from a layout perspective. This was then looked at in detail and the process flow reassessed from first principles to iron out any bottlenecks in the system and to make the new process work more comfortably within the existing constraints of the facility. The design optimisation was constantly cross-checked from an operational perspective, resulting in an evolutionary defragmentation process which consolidated and condensed the operation, thus releasing more capacity.

The refurbishment involved a carefully choreographed sequence of 36 simultaneous live projects whist the facility itself remained operational. Design works were therefore carefully story-boarded to meet the evolving project sequencing, with each sub-project having cause and effect assessment relative to associated projects and areas prior to resolution. One of the most complex areas was the Hot Kitchen, where the whole kitchen was completely upgraded with a significant increase in capacity and efficiency.