Delhiites for long have been promised a new airport, a world class facility that will more than make up for years of dripping ceilings and long queues they have faced. An airport that will become the face of Delhi when Commonwealth Games are held here in 2010. Over 25,000 people have been toiling ceaselessly for the past several months to turn this into reality. Most of them are faceless and, probably, will have little stake in the airport they are building. The project was awarded to GMR-led Delhi International Airport (P) Ltd (DIAL) in 2006. DIAL is developing the project in collaboration with Fraport, Eraman Malaysia, Airports Authority of India and India Development Fund. The Operations, Management and Development Agreement was signed in April 2006. USbased Brinckerhoff International Inc was appointed project management consultants and L&T was given design and construction. The foundation stone for the new i n t e g r at e d terminal, or T3 as it is better known, was laid on February 17, 2007. Work for the airport, with a capacity of 37 million passengers per year, has to be completed in 37 months, that is by March 2010. When the new integrated terminal is ready, the entire passenger capacity of the airport will be a whopping 60 million passengers per annum, sufficient till 2019. The new runway, which will take the flight-handling capacity of the airport to 65-70 flights per hour as against the present 35 per hour, is already ready. At the site, 22,000 labourers, mostly from Bihar, West Bengal and UP, supervised by 1,665 personnel from DIAL, consultants from Parsons Brinckerhoff and L&T , have been working round the clock to build an airport that will rival some of the best in the world, including the Hong Kong airport. Anil Dhawan, vice-president , construction, DIAL, says that about 200 skilled workers from abroad have been brought in to work along with the local labour, and by next year, a total of 1,000 such workers, mostly from the Middle East, would be working at T3. A whopping 20,000 w o rk e r s have been staying on site, with their families, to ensure that work is carried out uninterrupted, 24x7. Phua Chai Teck, vice-president , airport planning and development , told Times City, that the entire planning for the project took only six months though the norm is about a year for similar projects. ‘‘ The reason why we will be able to complete our work in the stipulated time is because all our work is happening simultaneously. We started construction even as planning was underway and tried to take forward all our work together. We have been able to stick to our original plans with very minor changes,’’ revealed I Prabhakar Rao, CEO, airport development. Transporting the huge quantity of material for the project was quite a task. About 500 trucks are coming to the site daily with supplies . Bitumen is being sourced from Panipat and Mathura. Other material and machines were brought in from various countries , including granite from Saudi Arabia, machines from Germany and cranes from Italy. The new runway used 1.65 lakh tonnes of cement which was sourced from 15 different suppliers! While the deadline may seem very close, officials are confident that work will be completed well in time. ‘‘ A lot of work is already over. The basic structure of the new terminal is in place and we have a sufficiently trained work force to ensure there are no hiccups ,’’ said Rao.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Transportation/Airlines__Aviation/Delhis_dream_airport_on_fast_track/articleshow/3525612.cms#
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