Harsco Infrastructure

Case studies

Dubai International Airport, UAE

Project challenges

Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport is one of the world’s largest, built as part of a $4.1 billion expansion programme to increase the airport’s capacity to 70 million passengers per year. The 1km long terminal building has a curved steel roof over a complex concrete frame and a substructure which accommodates arrival and departure halls, lounges, restaurants and parking.

This huge basement area was constructed in an excavation 800m long, 700m wide and 20m deep. The arrangement of floors includes varying ceiling heights and open voids making the construction of the concrete structure complex to design, plan and programme. The upper slab also forms part of the aircraft apron and therefore has to support the weight of the waiting planes.

Insight onsite™

Harsco Infrastructure worked with main contractor Al-Naboodah-JV to design and develop a forming and shoring solution to meet the unusually tight project deadline. The scale of the job was considerable, involving the construction of over 1 million square feet of floor slab with thicknesses of up to 2.2m and ceiling heights of up to 16m. Our GASS® aluminium shoring system was selected as the most appropriate, cost-effective solution. GASS® is one of the most sophisticated systems of its type, used on many of the world’s largest and most complex projects. Over a 30 month period, Harsco supplied over 5000 tonnes of GASS® and ancillary products to the site.

Using the company’s experience on similar airport projects in London and Hong Kong, a specialist team of falsework designers were based with the main contractor on site – supported by close management involvement from the UK. At the peak of the project, our designers were producing over 300 drawings per month.