Design

Founded in 1998, Firstco are control and communication systems engineers, specialising in the transportation sector.  Working predominately in airports, railways and intermodal operations our clients include infrastructure owners, operators, engineering consultancies, construction contractors and systems solution providers. Our experience includes the technologies and solutions commonly grouped as Communications, Security, Operational and Control & Monitoring systems, and often referred to as IT, ICT, SAS or ELV systems.

Based in London, we now employ over 80 staff and work extensively across the UK. We have grown into an international consultancy and system integrator with projects in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and we are currently exploring expansion into Asia and America.

As systems engineers we work throughout the asset lifecycle; consulting, delivering and supporting the growing number of technologies used to automate operational people and process.

Working from strategy to operations, Firstco specify, design, deliver, commission, integrate, trial, transition, support and maintain systems. We also specialise in stakeholder, interface, requirements and assurance management which are an increasingly complex and critical part of any infrastructure programme.

By remaining product-independent, we can help our customers to select the right solutions then ensure that they are configured to achieve effective and efficient operations. Our Technical Innovation Group work with emerging technologies and solution/product suppliers to identify opportunities and business benefits for introducing new solutions into high integrity environments.

Airport Technologies

A modern airport will have more than 150 systems with constantly developing and converging technologies, which are critical to safety, security and operation. In the world of ‘big data’, airport operators require increasing interoperability to efficiently manage their sites, and their stakeholders, regulators and passengers expect and demand easy access to a greater level of real-time data. However, with increasing global security issues and the advent of cyber threats, the need for secure, robust and resilient solutions has never been greater.

As existing airports continue to expand and new airports are constructed, it is imperative that the technology systems are considered from the outset and delivered as an integral part of the overall programme. The prerequisites and interfaces with the architecture, civil engineering, baggage and M&E solutions must be managed throughout to avoid costly delays at the point when the project hands over into the live operational environment.

Firstco’s broad experience over all these technologies, and throughout the entire asset lifecycle allows for a Value Assured Engineering approach to oversee the end-to-end solution, engaging the right specialist contractors at the right time in the process, to ensure quality on-time, on-budget delivery.

Firstco’s Aviation Experience

Firstco have worked at London Heathrow Airport for 20 years and have been involved throughout the major airport development programmes and in day-to-day operations.

Development programmes include:

•       Terminal 2 and Eastern Campus – Information and Control Systems (ICS)

-       ICS Design Leadership – strategy, scope, requirements, concept

-       ICS Scheme Design – Master Systems Integrator

-       DMI (Design, Manage, Integrate) – ICS technical assurance through delivery

•       Terminal 5

-       T5 Rail & Tunnels Guidance Team – design & commissioning leadership

-       T5 Rail & Tunnels Comms and Controls – design, delivery and integration

-       Airside Road Tunnel – control systems design and project management

-       Energy Centre and Control Tower – commissioning management

•       Heathrow Express

-       Station systems, original design and build, into operation

-       Extension of systems to Terminal 5 subsurface station and tunnels      -    Support and maintenance for 15 years

Engineering and operational solutions include:

Firstco are framework suppliers for SCADA across the airport

•       HEART – utilities control and monitoring

•       Heathrow Pods – automated people movers

•       APOC – airport centralised command and control facility

•       FAMS – centralised fire alarm monitoring across all terminals

•       Campus-wide metering and energy management

•       Baggage Handling Systems (BHS)

Support and maintenance of Heathrow’s systems, including:

•       Heathrow Rail

•       Heathrow Pods

•       FAMS

EMS

In addition to our work at London Heathrow Airport, Firstco have worked on UK aviation projects including:

•       Gatwick Airport – North Terminal redevelopment, Pier 3 expansion options, airfield utilities control & monitoring

•       Manchester Airports Group – London Stansted Airport Tracked Transit System (TTS) / Automated People Mover (APM) control system, utilities monitoring

•       Birmingham Airport – Airport Operation Systems specifications

Middle East airports including:

•       UAE – Dubai International, Dubai World Central and Abu Dhabi International

•       Oman – Muscat International and Salalah airports

•       Qatar – New Doha International Airport

•       Saudi Arabia – Jeddah, Madinah and Riyadh airports

•      Other GCC – Kuwait and Bahrain airports

GHD is a leading technical, advisory and engineering consultancy operating in the global markets of transportation, environment, water, energy, property and buildings.  Our Aviation Service Line employs over 100 dedicated professionals with global expertise covering airside and landside infrastructure across concept, design, construction and operations. 

In the UK, we are actively involved in aviation projects at a number of airports supporting the delivery of our clients' capital and maintenance infrastructure programmes. We are interested in engaging with potential partners and suppliers to build collaborative teams in line with our client service led culture.

Grimshaw is an international architecture firm that specialises in transport projects of national importance. Grimshaw is highly regarded in this particular sector for providing design leadership to projects that have strict cost, programme and highly aspirational outcomes at their core. Our portfolio of completed work includes projects in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, North America and Mexico. The practice specialises in helping aviation clients de carbonise their estates through efficient master planning and building designs which benefit from extensive experience in long-span structures and efficient form-finding parametrics. These skills support Grimshaw's on-going research and development thesis, including low-cost carrier terminal buildings. Grimshaw have committed to net zero carbon designs by 2025.

Sustainability Capabilities 

Grimshaw are fully committed to helping our clients deliver sustainable aviation infrastructure. We pride ourselves in creating master planning, infrastructure and building designs that push the boundaries in social and environmental regenerative design. We are committed to delivering only net zero carbon designs by 2025 and our highly skilled architects bring a people-centric approach to their focus on the key issues in aviation today.

Idom UK is a multi-disciplined consultancy with a proven track record of providing high quality, practical and pragmatic advice and designs to a wide range of clients across many sectors.  We are wholly owned by the IDOM Group, an employee-owned firm based in Bilbao, Spain. We have strong expertise and specialisms in different sectors including building, manufacturing, aviation, railway, and urban transport systems, providing services of aeronautical engineering, civil and structural engineering, architectural, MEP services, ground contamination, and health and safety. We are currently advising and designing airport infrastructure around the world, mainly in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, working on projects that involve: Masterplanning; Runway design and/or rehabilitation; Airfield signage re-designation; Environmental and sustainability improvements to existing infrastructure; New terminal buildings/ modification of existing buildings; and design of landside infrastructure.

INNOVATION                                                   EXCELLENCE                                        COMMITMENT

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) is an international architecture practice with offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Seoul and Abu Dhabi. KPF has designed airports around the globe, including Dulles International Airport, USA; Abu Dhabi Airport Midfield Terminal, UAE; and Nanning Wuxu International Airport in China. KPF was recently selected, with Heatherwick Studio, for the design of Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 5.

KPF has a long history of developing transportation facilities and transit-oriented developments that emphasise the importance of the passenger experience, instilling a powerful sense of place whilst also communicating the joy of travel through architectural expression.

Transportation systems are inexorably linked with worldwide economic, cultural, and technological growth. We aim to foster global connectivity through well-designed and secure facilities that provide clear circulation, comfortable surroundings and environmental sensitivity. Our designs also offer flexibility to accommodate the changing needs and technologies of modern travel.

KPF provides architectural, interior and urban design as well as programming and master planning services for clients in both the public and private sectors. Our extensive portfolio, which spans more than 35 countries, features a wide range of projects from airports and transportation facilities to civic, cultural and commercial spaces - including office, hotel and residential buildings. 

Lindner Prater is the UK's leading complete building envelope specialist and the only contractor of its kind to focus solely on the UK market.

Founded in 1950, our business has unrivalled expertise across all sectors within the Building industry, specialising in numerous disciplines: rain screen and rendered façade systems, composite cladding, curtain walling, single ply, metal roofing systems, structural waterproofing and off-site prefabricated solutions.

With a wealth of experience in the Aviation Sector, Prater's projects include envelopes works at  Stansted's terminal, Gatwick Pier 6 & North Terminal Extension, Heathrow T2A, T2B and T4, Manchester Airport Pier 1 & Link Bridge + Terminal 2 Extension and London City Airport Redevelopment

We are Morgan Sindall, the construction, infrastructure and design division of Morgan Sindall Group plc, a leading UK and construction and regeneration group. Our company is organised through five businesses of Infrastructure, Tunnelling, Construction, Utility Services and Design. We deliver public and private sector projects of all sizes. Baker Hicks is a leading design consultancy practice specialising in the design of aviation facilities and infrastructure. With over 25 years of experience in delivering facilities for the aviation sector, we offer a comprehensive and flexible approach to working with our customers in helping them achieve and exceed their expectations. We aim to create great results for our customers, partners and ourselves, by providing expertise across a broad range of market sectors. We also collaborate with our sister companies within Morgan Sindall Group to maximise our offering to customers. Airports are unique environments and require a special approach for engineering and construction activity. We have multi-disciplined capabilities, providing multi-disciplined aviation services including pavement and apron works, control tower and terminal construction, tunnelling, and installation of baggage handling facilities. Our aviation customers benefit from our experience as the only UK construction company to provide in-house capabilities across the entire range of airport services (airfield works, terminal construction and baggage handling system installation). This includes control tower and energy centre construction, terminal construction and modernisation, and apron, taxiway and runway works - we are one of the country’s leading airfield pavement contractors, having worked on runways and pavements at more than 20 major UK airports. Because we have built airport terminal buildings, check-in and baggage handling facilities as well as hangars, retail units and lounge areas, we have an in-depth understanding of the security implications of working airside. To assist our customers in meeting capital investment targets and regulatory deadlines, we work closely with airport stakeholders, employees and corporate bodies. This is coupled with a focus on maintaining ‘business as usual’ in live environments, and ensuring that passenger disruption is minimised. Customers also receive the benefit of our expertise in other sectors including rail, roads, bridges, energy, tunnelling and also defence, where we have completed hangar and airfield work.

Mott MacDonald is one of the world’s most experienced aviation consultancies, providing global expertise for over 40 years. With over 16,000 staff, we have principal offices in 50 countries and projects in 140. We have provided project finance, technical, business planning and transaction advice for >$75 billion of airport assets in over 100 countries. Our truly global project portfolio includes Heathrow, Gatwick, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Cyprus, Cairo, Cape Town, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sydney, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Costa Rica, Columbia and Ecuador.

Pascall+Watson are an award-winning international design practice with studios in the UK, Ireland and the Middle East. We are experts in the field of aviation design with global experience in airport masterplanning, terminal design, passenger modelling, wayfinding and all airport building types. Our reputation for designing and delivering complex projects has been founded on a collaborative and customer orientated approach. With over sixty years’ unrivalled experience, we provide a unique perspective to aviation design.

We are a vertical and horizontal transportation system (VHTS) consultants and provide advice on all aspects from: master planning; detailed planning; PAX flows and lift traffic analysis; specifications; tender documentation and analysis and site attendances from initial site meetings through witness testing/defect inspection to handover.

We designed the VHTS for a complete terminal with a flow of 8,500 PAX per hour and two large airport multi-storey car parks.

We have carried out surveys of all the VHTS equipment in complete large international airport and provide VHTS maintenance contract support for a complete large airport.

PriestmanGoode is a global design company that specialises in infrastructure, aviation, transport, hospitality and product design.  Our purpose lies in designing a better, more sustainable future.  People-centric to the core, we have been improving and transforming everyday experiences for millions of people around the world for over thirty years.  As a travel design specialists, we work with our client teams to create considered customer journeys across digital, physical products and services.  With departments for branding, strategy & CX, interior and product design, CMF and visualisation, we manage each project with a holistic, top-down approach, ensuring that projects are delivered on time and to budget.

Ramboll is a leading aviation consultancy with the delivery of airport facilities and infrastructure, encompassing more than 600 completed projects in over 50 countries across the world. In the UK we have worked or are working at most of the major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Manchester, Glasgow & Edinburgh. The airport projects that we have delivered range from strategic advisory, due diligence, masterplanning, project management, environmental and social impact, engineering design through to construction supervision, from the delivery of whole solutions for airport projects to specialised bespoke support. From major international airport hubs through to small regional airports serving the local community. At Ramboll to deliver innovative and award winning solutions we are able to draw upon not just our airport specialists but our expertise from across the world including off site manufacture, air quality, carbon management, ground remediation, fire safety, acoustics, energy, waste, geotechnics, tunnels, environmental engineering, transport planning and economic planning This is combined with local insight from our 300 offices across the globe to deliver world class airport solutions locally. We approach every project with a commitment to deliver inspiring solutions that deliver sustainable environments. Ramboll has been a leading thinker in defining new sustainability criteria tailored to a development as bespoke and complex as an airport terminal and producing innovative airfield designs that deliver long term performance and safety at a reasonable cost.

Established in 1982, Robert Bird is a global consulting engineering firm.  We are committed to delivering each client's vision throught the relentless pursuit of engineering excellence across all projects.  We offer consulting engineering services across five disciplines, drawing upon our international expertise.  These are: Structural, Geotechnical, Civil and Construction Engineering and Virtual Design and Construction.

We integrate engineering design excellence with construction and delivery expertise to achieve significant benefits for our client, notably those related to cost, programme and risk.  Globally collaborating to address projects at a local level, we can quickly assemble teams of engineering and related professionals from our offices worldwide.