Manchester Airport celebrates one year of construction

Manchester Airport has marked one year of construction on the biggest investment project in its history, which will see Terminal 2 become 150% bigger.

The programme got under way a year ago after a visit by the Secretary of State for Transport, Chris Grayling. Since then, the airport’s skyline has changed dramatically as the first pier has been built and over 70% of the steelwork has been erected on the terminal extension.

It is one of the biggest construction programmes in the north of England and there are currently 1,200 people working on site – including 80 apprentices, in trades ranging from plumbing and scaffolding to quantity surveying and civil engineering.

So far on the project, on the terminal extension and pier more than 14,500 pieces of steel have been installed by William Hare.

Manchester Airport CEO Andrew Cowan said: “This is the largest investment ever made in the airport and will transform the experience for our passengers and airlines alike, as well as creating job and training opportunities for local people and boosting businesses working on the scheme in the process.

“I’m excited to see the first pier open to passengers in just eight months’ time and to press ahead with the rest of the scheme, especially the new terminal building, which is on course to be open to passengers by mid-2020.”

The first pier is set to open to passengers in April 2019. At 216m-long, if it was stood upright it would be the tallest building in Manchester. The terminal extension is on course to open in 2020.

Laing O’Rourke Project Director Bryan Glass said: “We’re on schedule to deliver the transformation of Terminal 2 and that certainty of delivery has been driven by our offsite construction approach, with elements of the project manufactured offsite and assembled by our expert project team and technicians. There’s no room for complacency of course! Our team is focused on the next milestone – hand over of the first pier in January 2019.”

View the time lapse footage of the programme so far.

View the video tour of the project.