Amey pioneers L.E.D ‘first’ on Heathrow’s runways

Carbon emissions from lighting on Heathrow Airport’s runways will be halved*, due to the use of LED lighting on the runways, designed by airport infrastructure consultants from Amey.

The company’s specialist aviation consulting team has completed a project to design the rehabilitation of both runways at the world’s busiest international airport.

This includes finding the best solutions for resurfacing the runways with 50,000 tonnes of asphalt, replacing over 3,000 aeronautical ground lights with LED fittings and replacing 250km of cabling for the lights. It marks the first time LEDs have ever been installed on runways at Heathrow.

Amey is one of three suppliers on the Heathrow Airport Infrastructure Design Services framework – a two-year agreement which ends in 2013, with the option to extend for a further two years. Through this, Amey is working on the Heathrow Airport Runway Rehabilitations scheme, which has a total estimated project value of £55 million.

Expertise

Last year, Amey acquired BAA’s pavement and infrastructure design team, comprising 25 professionals based at Heathrow Airport who bring unrivalled knowledge of BAA’s infrastructure assets and 20 years’ experience of delivering runway projects.

The airport infrastructure team is based at Amey’s Consulting Hub near Crawley and provides a full range of services including master planning, pavement assessment and design, aeronautical ground lighting, airfield services design and airfield pavement management systems. In total, 1.2 million aircraft per annum use the runways they work on.

Andy Milner, Managing Director of Amey’s Consulting division, said: “Amey has acquired 25 global experts in aviation consulting. Their unrivalled knowledge of BAA’s infrastructure assets, combined with Amey’s experience across multiple disciplines, means together, we can manage and reduce whole life costs for our customer.”

*Over the life cycle of the runway lights. Heathrow also expects to get a return on its investment within three years, as the LED lights are more reliable and require less maintenance.