Source: Heathrow Airports Limited

Source: Heathrow Airports Limited

Heathrow Airport’s focus on stakeholder engagement is proving crucial for its cargo redevelopment and role in a digitalisation project for truck handling operations.

The UK’s largest airport and biggest hub for cargo is using a participatory stakeholder approach as it redevelops its ‘Horseshoe’ cargo area and supports the rollout of the CCS-UK AIS (Advance Information System) portal for booking and monitoring trucks.

During a roundtable discussion with industry media in the fourth quarter of last year, James Golding, head of cargo at Heathrow Airport, said the airport’s cargo team has strived to build relationships with stakeholders.

Golding said: “Learning from others was a key part of what we wanted to do. My predecessor set in motion the level of engagement that he aspired to and through Covid we continued with that because the pandemic obviously brought a whole way of operating differently that we needed to react to and we couldn’t do that if we didn’t talk across the community.

“Post-Covid what we’ve tried to do is solidify that level of stakeholder engagement, continue to build where relationships don’t exist but maintain relationships where they have existed.

“We’ve put in place a structure where every single one of the key (cargo) stakeholders now has a partnership manager within Heathrow. So, the cargo strategy has been refreshed through that partnership engagement.”

Heathrow evolves

The focus on engagement comes as Heathrow has been redeveloping its ‘Horseshoe’ cargo area.

There will be five new cargo first line facilities. Four will be in the cargo west area of Heathrow and one in the cargo east area.

First line cargo facilities include three IAG Cargo facilities, plus one dnata facility and one Swissport facility. To the right of the current cargo east area is also a Heathrow-owned plot of land with various uses.

“We will be building five new cargo facilities to replace the Shoreham Road and Sandringham Road facilities,” said Golding.

These facilities will have their own landside and airside yards and gatehouse. There will also be new aircraft stands.

All new facilities will have direct access to other key airside areas of the airport to speed up throughput of what is primarily belly cargo in the airport.

“There are no changes to IAG Cargo’s campus, dnata or Swissport. And no changes to our second line cargo facilities,” confirmed Golding.

The phased demolition and rebuild of the cargo site is planned to begin in 2026 or 2027 and is expected to take close to a decade.

“You can expect us to start on site within the next two to three years and ultimately to complete within the next 8-10 years,” stated Golding.

Although the duration of the work may seem daunting, Heathrow doesn’t expect there to be any major downtime. While some operational disruption is a given, it is anticipated that the airport will “maintain processing capacity throughout the redevelopment” due to the phased approach of the work.

Consideration was also given to planning the works to minimise disruption to local communities next to the airport.

Ultimately, following completion of the redevelopment, Heathrow aims to grow cargo volumes and market share in a more efficient and sustainable way to be “fit for the future”.

Different approaches to AIS

One part of the Heathrow redevelopment that is particularly relevant to the rollout of the CCS-UK AIS portal for booking and monitoring trucks is the lack of parking within the new cargo development.

AIS is being implemented partly to improve truck turnaround times and so it has a valuable part to play in helping facilitate smooth operations post-development.

Currently there is truck parking in the middle of the Shoreham Road estate, but the new development will see truck parking available in a designated area nearby instead. This will be integrated into the AIS slot booking system.

Looking at the bigger picture, AIS has been a complex learning curve for Heathrow and learning from the approaches, successes and challenges of other airports that have implemented it, as per its drive for engagement, has been crucial.

Jason Breakwell, commercial director at Luxembourg-based road feeder services company Wallenborn, has plenty of experience of slot management systems in practise.

On a small scale, slot management can be effective without complex operations. Breakwell cited Luxembourg Airport as an example.

“Luxembourg works very well, but there’s only one shed,” he said during the media roundtable.

But when there are multiple cargo sheds and slots to manage, more challenges arise.

Frankfurt ran into some issues because of its top-down approach to implementation of slot management, Breakwell said.

He explained part of the problem was the system was originally used for maritime ports, but an airport is “a completely different environment” with different needs.

Breakwell added: “There wasn’t sufficient consultation with the users. It was a very rigid, inflexible slot management system.

“Not only could you not add an airway bill to a slot. But if something changed within an airway bill that was in the slot you had to get a new slot. That might be six or eight hours later so that didn’t work.”

Now Frankfurt is “fine tuning” its truck booking system, according to Breakwell. “They have come back and consulted with us.”

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport Photo Pixabay

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Photo: Pixabay

Schiphol sets example

In comparison to Frankfurt, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is an example of an airport that has implemented slot management well.

“It’s community based, it’s collaborative, they’re going slowly and seeing what works and what doesn’t work and making sure that the truckers and forwarders and handlers are involved,” explained Breakwell. “And that brings more flexibility. But we still don’t have a perfect system.”

Meanwhile, the UK has been slow off the mark with cargo developments, he remarked, but Heathrow is now on the right track.

“When we’re talking about the UK, we’re really talking about Heathrow (as the biggest cargo hub). It is behind. It’s because Heathrow didn’t invest in cargo. It didn’t seem to be part of the strategy, but it has had a major correction in the last 4.5 years.”

As with its horseshoe redevelopment, Heathrow has adopted a participatory approach to AIS.

““Heathrow’s doing the right thing because it’s working,” Breakwell reflected. “Engaging with the community. The community has to decide what’s good for them.

“There is going to be stick as well as carrot because the new development is going to cause constraints, but what’s happened at Schiphol has been a good example of collaborative decision making where we’ve all come together and a variety of stakeholders have made it work.”

Heathrow in fact visited Schiphol in November to “see it in action and to learn from those that have done it well”, added Golding. He further added: “We talk to the Schiphol team regularly.”

Collaboration at Heathrow is in fact more important than ever with the rollout of plans for the AIS trucking initiative and the cargo redevelopment.

Golding said the airport’s management company, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) has set up a cargo community steering group with help from the British International Freight Association (BIFA), with the aim of providing a structured way to bring stakeholders together, encourage collaboration and participation in changes.

The steering group is made up of representatives from different stakeholder groups.

BIFA will represent all the freight forwarders in the steering group and will run different working groups.

“The first of those working groups will be focused on landside congestion. We absolutely know that’s top of the list.”

HAL is also in “advanced conversations” with property development landlord SEGRO, which in 2017 bought the remaining 50% stake in the Airport Property Partnership (APP) joint venture it did not already own from Aviva Group Entities for £365m.

Plus, CCS-UK is working with BIFA and HAL, alongside transit sheds, forwarders and transport companies, to align with HAL’s and SEGRO’s goal to improve air cargo ground logistics.