Türkiye's giant Istanbul Airport reinforces the country’s historical role as a bridge between East and West. As a pivot between key air routes across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, the hub was designed to handle as many as 200 million passengers annually once it runs at full capacity by 2050.
The country's flagship airline, Turkish Airines, moved its operations from Atatürk International Airport to Istanbul to establish a new customer-focused hub that could help position the airline for continued growth.
Arup was appointed as strategic advisor and programme and project manager for the design and construction stages of Turkish Airline’s new operational facilities at the hub, and was also the design manager and project manager for the lounges and key customer experience touchpoints in the terminal.
The overriding challenge of this project was the ambitious opening date for October 2018. Arup adopted an agile approach to project managing the operational facilities, which resulted in a 36-month turnaround from design to delivery. We developed the design brief for each of the facilities and created the procurement strategy and tender for the design and construction amid very tight delivery deadlines. We also managed the designers on behalf of the client, while engaging with all the key players including internal Turkish Airlines stakeholders and the public-private partnership concession holders for the Istanbul Airport.
A megahub of this capacity requires operational facilities to match: Turkish Airlines alone has ten different maintenance and operational buildings on site with a total footprint of 700,000m². With more than 350 destinations worldwide, the hub is one of the most active and important air-transport locations anywhere. But it needed to provide a world-class travel experience, too, for which Arup’s management played a key role in balancing stakeholder needs – including those of passengers.
Providing programme and project management expertise
Part of our role included understanding, collecting and reviewing the operational needs and expansion strategies of all the stakeholders to ensure they were appropriately reflected in the design. Throughout the project, we coordinated with more than 30 stakeholders and provided design management and design review services for their new facilities. The large number of stakeholders and the involvement of multiple decision-making bodies required rapid reaction to change, all the while managing client expectations to comply with very tight deadlines.
A multi-disciplinary team of Arup aviation and facilities experts as well as project managers worked together to detail the programme of requirements for the maintenance and operational facilities, with a total surface area of 700,000m². Working directly with Turkish Airlines, Arup developed the design brief for each of the facilities and created the procurement strategy and tender for the design and construction amid very tight delivery deadlines. The commission of the maintenance and operational facilities came on the back of our successful delivery of the airport and aviation master planning for winning consortium IGA.
With a rough footprint of 164,000m² and 175,000m² each, the cargo and catering buildings are the largest such air-related facilities in the world. Turkish Airlines crew have access to top-of-the-range amenities, with a crew-only terminal with its own designated Check-in, Security Screenings and Custom Controls, separate baggage handling system; as well as staff-only lounges, briefing areas and bus gates.
