Gatwick Airport

The Client

Wates Smart Space provides Facilities Management services to Gatwick Airport, London. Gatwick is the second-busiest airport in the UK by passenger traffic by volume of annual passengers of around 45m, making London Gatwick the biggest single runway Airport in the World. The airport owners, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) have a desire to meet their sustainability targets, to reduce the energy consumption of their estate and introduce operational efficiencies throughout the estate.

Their Problem

The estates washrooms use a mixed range of high speed hand dryers, with power ratings ranging between 1600 and 2300 watts. These dryers are energy hungry costing the estate £0.0044 to £0.00192 per dry, and the units have a high motor failure rate. Further, the estate manager has no way of remotely monitoring washroom hand dryer usage for responsive cleaning against sudden and peak usage surges.

Our Solution

SAVORTEX deployed its EcoCurve 550D Smart hand dryer on a trial basis in the male washrooms in the South Terminal where there is high footfall. The EcoCurve Smart uses an advanced digital brush-less motor technology, which consumes power of just 550W and offers 10x more operational life than traditional dryers. The EcoCurve smart dryer uses its patented in-built sensors wirelessly reporting energy usage per dry to the SAVORTEX web portal, allowing estates managers remote access to manage washroom facilities. Over the trial period the estates manager was able to monitor hand dryer usage and washroom footfall of 14,100 pairs of hands being dried, resulting in a consumption of 14.90 KG of C02, and run responsive cleaning schedules based on footfall, introducing new operational efficiencies throughout the estate.