Establishing a collaborative environment is crucial to delivering a successful outcome and Amey and DIO teams at RAF Brize Norton certainly proved this to be the case recently when they worked together to ensure the safe re-opening of a Hangar at the site, providing a better and safer place of work for RAF Movements personnel.
Hangar 49 is one of the original buildings on the RAF site and is more than 80 years old. Despite its age, it is still regarded as the ‘cornerstone of the sites Defence capability’ so an ambitious and extensive project was developed by Amey and DIO to completely refurbish the building, remove the existing asbestos to spruce up the hangar for a 21st century look and feel.
The project is a great example of current Defence doctrine known as the ‘Whole Force Approach’ in which contractors work closely with the Armed Forces and the MOD to ensure operational needs are met. Effective collaboration between Support Services Squadron RAF, Amey and DIO over a twenty-six month period was the key to its success. All parties adopted an open and highly flexible relationship, ensuring that the Defence’s output requirements continued as infrastructure solutions were put in place.
On Friday 12th June, Hangar 49 was officially re-opened by Station Commander, Group Captain James who said “Today’s reopening of Hangar 49 hopefully marks the beginning for a brighter future for air movements at RAF Brize Norton, with Defence Support and Programme Future Airport working hard to bring together automation, digitisation and innovative ways of working to the cargo handling facility.
Amanda Janes, Amey’s Senior Project Manager, was delighted with how the teams worked together and said “Both DIO and Amey have shown to be diligent in their handling of the issues that surrounded this multi-tasked project, which was one mainly of Asbestos. They managed to co-ordinate the removal of Asbestos from the 64,000 cubic metre area within just 14 weeks, which allowed the bulk of the work to progress to completion. DIO and Amey teams, through their ingenuity and dedication were able to achieve a mid-May delivery despite the challenges of COVID-19, which the Station Commander remarked as being ‘commendable’ during the official opening.”
In a message from Head of Logistics Branch and Trades, Air Vice-Marshal Richard Hill added “I was delighted to hear that Royal Air Force Brize Norton’s Hangar 49 has re-opened, I should like to take this opportunity to thank those officers, warrant officers, non-commissioned officers, airmen and airwomen each of whom have played their part and worked so hard to maintain the Air Port of Embarkation’s ability to despatch freight throughout the disruption caused by the building work on Hangar 49.”