Istanbul Airport

Designed by Grimshaw, with master planning by Arup, the Istanbul New Airport is a new ‘mega-airport’, replacing the city’s Atatürk Airport, which will have six runways and the capacity to handle up to 200 million passengers annually once fully operational by 2030.

Heralded as the major hub at the intersection of Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the scale of the €7bn project is illustrated by the fact that 20,000 workers were employed on-site at one time, supported by 58 cranes.

To protect maintenance teams with restraint systems, removing the possibility of a fall, the responsible contractor selected to use the Horizontal Lifeline system from SFS. This UK-designed and manufactured system has been installed across the 400,000 sq. m standing seam roof, with 2,200 high load posts, which feature a special customized surface finish, interlinked by 18km of stainless steel wire. The result is a highly effective fall protection solution that is aesthetically sympathetic and comfortably accommodates the design intent.

The system was part of a package of building envelope solutions provided by the SFS Group. This included a range of high performance SFS SL2, SD6-5.5 and SD14 fasteners for the standing seam roof, plus thousands of GESIPA BULB-TITE® blind rivets. Close collaboration between the SFS teams in the UK and Turkey ensured the client could take full advantage of a tailor-made package backed with market-leading technical support and a team resourced to fulfill the tight delivery schedule.

SFS Fall Protection Systems are designed to provide fall protection on trapezoidal roof profiles, standing seam and flat roofs. The system is fully stainless steel manufactured, tested and certified to EN795:2012 and CEN/TS16415:2013.