The challenge
A major global airport in London, UK, needed to determine how to maintain operations within a legacy terminal until 2040, the earliest point at which major interventions or closure could occur. This requirement was driven by capacity constraints and ongoing development programs across the wider airport estate. The airport sought to optimize expenditure, maintain customer and airline satisfaction and provide a safe operating environment, while avoiding over-investment in the terminal.
The solution
The airport partnered with the consulting firm Jacobs, which selected Predictor to model and analyze the condition of more than 95,000 assets over the terminal’s estimated remaining lifetime. These assets ranged from passenger-facing facilities and airside infrastructure to operational and support assets. The Predictor tool allowed a probabilistic lifecycle analysis, generating a model that forecasts maintenance demands and replacement costs across the terminal. The bottom-up approach that Predictor enabled delivered visibility at the portfolio, asset, functional and strategic-location levels.
Predictor enabled the airport to:
- Understand the current condition of assets within the terminal.
- Predict future maintenance requirements and asset deterioration timeframes.
- Identify and schedule required projects, estimate costs and minimize operational disruption.
The results
Predictor was selected due to its ability to manage large volumes of asset data, perform detailed bottom-up, asset-by-asset analysis and provide flexibility in complexity depending on user needs. Jacobs also recommended Predictor as its preferred tool for this type of analysis.
By utilizing Predictor, the airport was able to leverage existing asset data to better understand future development needs within the terminal and identify the optimal timing for investment across specific asset classes.
The digital solution incorporated potential closure dates and assessed the impact of major capital investments on terminal operations. The modeling horizon was extended to 2050 to account for an expanded operational window for the terminal.
The Predictor analysis supported the evaluation of a range of prospective tactical investments and associated timeframes, while also helping to substantiate ongoing works.
The collaboration between Jacobs, with its advisory and infrastructure engineering expertise, and Brightly (which was later acquired by Siemens), with its smart asset management solutions, proved highly effective. Together, they facilitated a seamless and efficient analysis and modeling process that was completed in approximately one year.
Chris Newson, Business Development and Strategic Asset Management Lead at Brightly Software (now a part of Siemens Asset Management), comments: “Predictive asset management and maintenance of critical infrastructure is key to safe, reliable and cost-effective operations. Through utilizing Predictor from Brightly [Siemens], this major airport has gained the knowledge needed to minimize the whole-life cost of maintaining the terminal’s asset stock over the next 25 years. By having a detailed understanding of what, where and when to maintain, the airport can ensure that it can deliver effectively and cost efficiently to minimize operational disruption.”