The new Istanbul Airport was built in record time. It was a mammoth task for the Schindler team who installed 328 elevators, 166 escalators, and 167 moving walks in just two years.
The gigantic new Istanbul Airport is being built 35 kilometers from the city center. It covers an area of 76.5 million square meters – equivalent to 11 000 football pitches. Schindler will help the estimated 250 000 travelers travelling through the enormous airport each day with 328 elevators, 166 escalators, and 167 moving walks.
During construction, the management team worked on-site in mobile offices to coordinate the 270 Schindler colleagues who were part of an enormous workforce of more than 30 000 people working to get the airport ready for operations.
The scale, speed, and complexity of this mega-project was enormous. At peak times, up to 50 Schindler teams were working on the building site simultaneously, which evolved and grew like a living organism daily. With everything so interconnected, a single wrong decision in one place could have halted work at other parts of the site for several days.
Adding to the complexity, logistics had to be coordinated for hundreds of different units, with installation sites located throughout the airport. With such an immense area to cover, an inspection round could involve a kilometer-long hike – and this was only a short sprint compared to the marathon that the entire Schindler crew has completed over the last couple of years.
In the end, a total of 661 Schindler units, more than in almost any other building worldwide, were installed in just two years. And to make sure things keep moving smoothly after the construction work was done, Schindler has a service team imbedded on site.
Zafer Kabadayi, General Manager of Schindler Turkey, is proud of his crew’s work. ‘The airport will be the new gateway to Istanbul, welcoming millions of people from around the world. For Schindler, this is a unique opportunity to showcase our experience and capabilities.’