Cadaing, Patricia Anne P.

IV-BS EPM
EPU-115 | S 8:00-11:00

BEIJING CAPITAL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

China is the fastest growing economy in the world, as the country opens up to the world
Beijing Capital International Airport needs to evolve to cope with flight overload. In 2001, Beijing won
the bid to host the 2008 Olympic games and that results to a surge of visitors in the country. Hence
they must build their airport before the Olympic games to be able to cope with the amount of people
that will visit the country. With a booming economy, China has an unprecedented construction projects
on the go and with the Olympic games coming up, Chinese authorities plan on even more. To host the
Olympic games they plan to build several new facilities where the games will take place, e.g., a new
national theater called The Egg, a new stadium called The Birds Nest, and a giant swimming olympic
pool called The Water Cube. And because of the anticipated rise in the number of visitors, Beijings
aging airport will struggle to cope and they must build the worlds largest airport.

The current airport terminals, Terminals 1 and 2, were facing massive runway traffic and the
east and west side were at full capacity and no longer meet the requirements. Terminal 3 must be
completed on time or else they will face aviation gridlock. In 2003, Foster and Partners won the
contract to design the new airport terminal. Terminal 3 must hold approximately 150 aircrafts at one
time, 120 more than Beijings existing 2 terminals. One of the main concern of the architects were the
possibility of disasters and what might happen during the construction of airport for example storms or
earthquakes. Terminal 3 lies within the major seismic regions, making it vulnerable to earthquake. So
in order to create an earthquake resistant structure, they have partnered with a local structural
engineer. Having big projects such as Terminal 3 can entail danger and unexpected hazards. With so
many construction projects in Beijing, the Chinese must keep a close eye on design and construction
method. The government ensured that strict guidelines are applied to all projects to ensure safety.
Before constructing the site, the team of local engineers visited the site where the airport
terminal was going to be built. Upon arrival at the site they were surprised to see people still living in
that area. Turns out that the Terminal 3 site was a community of 10,000 people and that the entire
area must be cleared and the people rehoused. Although it took months to persuade the residents to
move the job was finished just ahead of the ground breaking ceremony in March 2004.
Excavation and construction began on April 2004 with a workforce of almost 50,000 and two
of Chinas largest construction firms each building one of Terminal 3s massive concourses, Terminal
3A and 3B. 217 pile drivers started knocking 20,000 steel piles into the ground but as soon as they
started on this they encountered a problem. The water table was close to the surface that with heavy
rains it can rise further and might cause to the piles to float. Using two kinds of piles were helpful, one
was a pressure resistant pile and the other was an uplift pile to prevent the structure from floating due
to the high level of underground water. The piles also help protect the building from the risk of
earthquake damage. When an earthquake wave strikes it takes some time to travel from the south
side to the north side of the building so theyve adopted a different design from conventional buildings.
Special joints were attached to the buildings can stand up to to forces of earthquake. These joints
help the building from twisting/torsion. The joints absorb the impact should the roof and walls contort.
The steel beams in the roofing were also designed with safety and size in mind so they can be strong
enough to resist the forces. But with the temperature changes from hot to cold throughout the year,
the terminal might grow and shrink by up to 80 cm which can have an impact on the roofing and
supporting columns and can cause it to bend out of shape. This is because steel expands and
contracts as it heats up and cools down. In order to prevent this damage from happening they use
thermal expansion joints positioned in between the columns and roof so that when the steel roof
expands the joint glides along a sliding mechanism so the rood can expand and shrink without
causing destruction.
Asides from the Terminal building itself, another problem that they have to face was with the
bagging system. Their bagging system was expected to handle 19,200 pieces of luggage per hour
with a 68 km conveyer belts hurdling luggage around the airport. Their initial plan was to construct a
double-decker system, doubling the capacity. But in order to do so, they need additional ceiling space
that would lead to a 5 m drop to the basement. Which is another adjustment that the design team
needed to make. They also need a luggage system that must transfer bags between the north and
south ends of Terminal 3, a distance of over 2 km. In order to cope with this work load they have
installed a four stage high speed belt to whisk back and forth the two concourses. They conducted
mock tests to see the efficiency of their luggage system and the results came out positive. The normal
construction time for this proposed luggage system is about 4-5 years but with the nearing deadline
they had no choice but to cut their construction period to 2 and a half years and to start construction
whilst the terminal is on the way.
Apart from the natural disaster that might be hazardous to the tourists using the airport
another safety precaution they have to consider is the vulnerability of the people to terrorist attacks
and with the expected surge of visitors for the Olympic games this a factor they cannot miss. The
baggage system must be made terrorist proof especially with the large amount of bags that will go
through the terminal. The use of advanced X-ray systems, developed by Siemens in Germany, has
been installed that can scan up to 600 bags per minute. This advanced scanning system minimizes
the vulnerability of people to bombers.
Constructing the additional Terminal was for the surge of people that will visit Beijing come the
2008 Olympic games. What they did not expect was the additional visitors that might visit the country
so in order to ope with the additional number of people they constructed an additional building to
Terminal 3 called Terminal 3C. The Chinese government only planned on creating Terminal 3A and 3B
which is located at the north and south side of the Terminal but the unexpected increase in number of
visitors have led them to start the construction of Terminal 3C earlier than expected. Terminal 3C will
be located in between T3A and T3B. With the additional building they have to cope with the additional
requirement of 80,000 sq.m. of land. It was a massive job but the deadline cant be changed, they had
to finish T3C in time for the Olympic games. The use of T3C will first be mainly to serve the Olympic
teams.
On April 2006, the roof and structure of Beijing Capital International Airport Terminal 3 was
complete. Making it in time for the 2008 Olympic games.

Learnings
After watching this documentary I realize how important it is to plan for an airport. Not only
must you consider the strategic positioning of the site but must also consider safety, vulnerability of
the place to natural disasters, possible expansion and contraction of the building because of the
temperature and also the potential of terrorism. Such things must be considered not only for the
visitors of Beijing but also the safety of the the people working at the airport.
Foster and Partners, the company in charge of design, also integrated the use of natural
indoor lighting by creating large windows along the sides of the airport as well as small windows
located on the roof to let natural lighting come in the building. This can help them conserve energy
during the daytime and that for me is a good way to maximize natural resources. My only concern
with this si that they used steel roofing and during the summer time when the temperature is high they
might have a problem with cooling building since the heat from the steel roof has a direct effect on the
building making the air conditioning units in the building work twice as much in order to cope with the
heat. So there should be proper ventilation in the building in order to help the AC units as well as keep
the place cool.
Watching this documentary is an eye opener for me since I got to see the factors to consider
in designing and constructing an airport. It was a fruitful experience and I learned a lot from this
documentary.