Flagship Gatwick projects hit by delays and budget issues

Two of Gatwick Airport’s flagship construction projects being delivered by Vinci and Carillion are months behind schedule and have seen their budgets increase by millions of pounds, Building can reveal.

The projects, together valued at more than £250m, include the largest construction contract let to date by the airport’s current owners Global Infrastructure Partners.
In Gatwick’s latest capital investment plan, published last month, the airport said both jobs, which the two firms are delivering separately, had been subject to “project delays and commercial challenge”.

Vinci is rebuilding pier one of Gatwick’s south terminal and installing a high-tech baggage sorting system, which forms the second phase of a £179m upgrade to the pier. It is the biggest project undertaken since Global Infrastructure Partners bought the airport in 2009.

The job, which Vinci was appointed to do in November 2012, was originally scheduled to complete in the summer of 2015, but will now not complete until December 2015, according to Gatwick.

In its investment plan Gatwick said the “timing slippage” had been due to a delay in closing the pier “for contractual reasons” and “adverse weather conditions”.

A Gatwick spokesperson confirmed the total budget for the scheme is now £187m, an £8m increase on the £179m budget set out in the airport’s 2013 investment plan.
In a joint statement Gatwick and Vinci attributed the increase to a “transfer of scope from other programmes into the pier one programme”.

Separately, a £74m scheme to reconfigure the north terminal’s pier five and build a new passenger corridor on top of the existing pier, which is being delivered by Carillion, will be completed nearly a year later than planned.

The scheme, which Carillion was appointed to build in 2012, had been due to complete in May this year but will now not finish until March 2015, according to Gatwick.

The airport’s investment plan said the project had been “prolonged due to a number of unplanned activities including ground work delays due to unchartered services”.
A Carillion spokesperson said there had been “time and cost over-runs” due to the “complexity
of the work”.

The Gatwick spokesperson confirmed the total budget for the scheme had increased £7.5m to £81.5m, which he attributed to “changes in scope”.