Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose, Cornwall

To ensure all construction works could be safely completed within the closure of the Base our design team undertook an intense design period and collaborated with the contractor and client’s management team to provide an acceptable design, source local materials and complete the client’s approval process to attain technical sign off for construction to commence. This included regular co-ordination meetings with the client which assisted with informed decision making to ease the design approval process.

For dealing with the unknown condition of the underlying material, our design team utilised experience from previous projects to develop a series of solutions that could be used by the construction team.

As a value engineering exercise, we worked closely with the contractor to develop a sustainable solution by recycling tar-bound material from the excavated pavements into the lower layers of the new taxiway construction. This saved significant off-site disposal costs and improved the CO2 rating of the project.

To maintain the operations, the rehabilitation of the taxiways had to be phased in a manner that ensured a taxi route was maintained from the critical dispersal areas to the runway.