Wind speed

Meeting a tight deadline and coping with high winds were just two of the challenges faced by Bam in the construction of Europe's largest airport development in Berlin, Germany. The Berlin Brandenburg International airport (BBI) is one of the largest infrastructure projects currently under construction in Germany as well as being the largest airport development project in Europe.

Contractor Bam Deutschland was responsible for construction of the passenger terminal, which had a deadline of just 12 months.

Bam relied on Peri to supply the enormous quantities of slab, wall and column formwork for the placing of the 200000 m³ of reinforced concrete. A Peri spokesperson said, "The short construction period meant Peri engineers worked in close co-operation with Bam to create more than 400 formwork and assembly plans in just six months."

The slab tables and column formwork were pre-assembled by Peri as transportable units and delivered directly to the site. This saved on time, labor and storage space.

Due to the huge quantities of materials, slab tables and formwork elements were prefabricated in Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg and at the co-ordinating centre for the project at Weissenhorn.

In order to meet the tight schedule, almost 2000 modular tables and 700 customized slab tables - designed together with Bam - were used for the project.

A Bam spokesperson said, "Site operations benefited from improved flexibility because even with high wind forces, work was able to continue without any interruptions. This was a very important factor at BBI which is regularly affected by such winds."