Drainage teams support opening of new airport car park

Drainage expertise delivered by Lanes Group plc has supported the opening of London Stansted Airport’s first multi-storey car park.

Lanes teams provided CCTV drainage survey, water jetting drain cleaning and pipe repair services for the main contractor, BAM Construction.

The 2,700 space, six storey car park boosts the number of short-stay car parking spaces available at the airport to more than 7,000 and has been opening in time to meet peak summer demand.

Lanes drainage engineers from the Lanes East London depot in Rainham have been attending the construction site at the airport in Essex over several months during the car park’s construction.

Mick Fahy, Senior Site Manager for BAM Construction said: “We delivered the project on time and on budget thanks to the support we’ve had from suppliers like Lanes Group.

“The new multi-storey car park has been built above an existing surface car park. Making sure the drainage system and its connections with wider drain network was in excellent condition was vital.

“Lanes delivered very good service. They were always on site on time, with excellent safety standards and a positive approach to delivering the outputs we needed, when we needed them.”

Lanes Area Development Manager Roy Howard said: “As the UK’s largest independent drainage specialist, we could deploy all services BAM Construction needs for such a substantial development.

“The pressure was on to meet challenging timescales, and we were ready and able to dispatch specialist teams to site at short notice whenever they were needed.”

A total of 760 metres of drainage pipes ranging from 100mm to 450mm in diameter were cleaned using a jet vac tanker and surveyed with robotic and push-rod CCTV survey cameras.

High water flow rates from a large six storey car park into underground surface water drainage pipes meant the drains had to meet stringent standards.

Therefore, Lanes also carried out air-tests along key drainage runs by pumping compressed air into the lines to check that they would hold the pressure and so would be watertight.

As a result, seven 0.5m-long point liners, also known as patch liners, were installed in one 25 metre section of 300mm-diameter concrete pipe.

A key objective of the construction project was to avoid disruption for airport customers. Roy Howard said: “Lanes teams are very experienced at working in live environments so could meet all measures BAM Construction had put in place to assist airport customers.”

London Stansted Airport is owned by MAG, which also operates Manchester Airport and East Midlands Airport.

The new car park is part of the London Stansted Airport Transformation Project, an extensive programme of work that will enable the airport to make best use of its existing runway capacity and create greater choice and better service for passengers.