A Day at Hamad International Airport

Ferrovial Services (FMM) embarked on an exciting journey in the Middle East after being awarded in 2013 major contracts at Hamad International Airport (HIA) facilities: Passenger Terminal Complex, Aircraft Maintenance Hangar, Catering Facility and Roads and Tunnels.

Hamad International Airport – Landing Film from The Film House on Vimeo.

So much work and energy goes into winning of a new contract starting with the formation of strategies, deliverables and financial plan up until migration and full project mobilisation. However, all of our efforts may unexpectedly come to an end if we don’t put the same amount of dedication and commitment in fulfilling our promise of delivering five-star hard and soft facility management services at Qatar’s award-winning airport. Winning the contract is feat in itself; meeting and exceeding our client’s expectations is the real icing on the cake.

One of the challenges we face on a daily basis is to provide uninterrupted service on a 24/7 working environment. The coordination among the different teams is key for achieving our daily targets. A wide fleet of 30 buses picks up around 1,100 employees at our company accommodation per shift. Multiply that by three and we have a whopping 3,300 team members being dropped off at the airport every day. To ensure continuity of service, we have allotted an hour of handover between the out-going and in-coming personnel for them to share and exchange significant work-related information. Meetings and briefings with our clients and employees are also organised thrice a day to discuss our deadlines and actions plans.

In terms of hard services, a full review of the pending preventive and corrective maintenance work orders is being carried out by our designated supervisors every shift, every day. Led by our engineers, they plan and organise the work load of the maintenance teams and attend to all potential emergencies accordingly.

Our soft services team is being monitored by over 130 cleaning specialists composed of Custodial Managers, Operational Supervisors and Operational Team Leaders. All together, they organise and deploy the necessary manpower and material resources demanded by all areas at the airport every day. Identifying the right number of personnel to be deployed is very essential considering the vast zones of the airport to be covered including the mosque, façades and roof cascades, 290 washrooms, car parks, check in areas, departures terminal, lounges, top of the line airport hotel and retail outlets.

We are also providing assistance to HIA’s Fault Reporting Centre (HIA FRC). On average, about 333 calls are being managed by HIA’s Fault Reporting Centre (FRC) team per day. That’s around 10,000 unique calls received every month. The figures doesn’t stop there – there are about 100 emails sent and received per day! The HIA FRC team issues all corrective maintenance projects to our local FRC teams who will finally assign the work orders to our operational teams. Every work order is critical and every minute counts. Time is of the essence and the job must be satisfactorily completed as soon as possible.

And every day, we must always ensure that our stocks are well-kept and replenished whenever necessary. Spread in a huge airport of 600,000m², we have 12 stores where we keep consumables, chemicals and a variety of spare parts of different sizes and values such us motors, sensors, fans, sockets and lamps, to name a few. We have more than 14,000 references and the minimum and maximum levels of each of these references are programmed in the Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), a system capable of generating auto orders. This system enable us to place orders to our local and international suppliers in advance before the stock runs out.

Every single day, the Business Support team provides different services to the operational teams related to administration, business improvement, logistics, systems and asset data management. Everyday, around 50 airport pass applications are being processed and more than 1,400 work orders are being managed by the Business Support team not to mention the monitoring of the Electronic Time and Attendance System (ETAs) as well as the periodic review and analysis of more than a hundred KPIs.

Quality assurance is being carried out by the hard and soft services platform teams using our different software tools. For instance, around 50 electronic tablets are used and more than 75 cleaning inspections are conducted by the FMM team at the airport every day.

In its four years of operation, HIA jumped from 75^th to 6^th place in the Skytrax World Airport Ranking. This year, HIA have received numerous accolades such as Best Airport in the Middle East and World’s Best First Class Airline Lounge, to name a few. FMM takes pride in this achievement because our team is responsible for providing exceptional custodial services at the lounges.

Every day is different at Hamad International Airport. In Qatar during the summer months, the temperatures are extremely high and as per the law, working outdoors from 11:30 up until 15:00 is prohibited. The long sand storms and the unpredictable but few strong rains are key factors in our delivery. Working with over 4,000 employees with 20 different nationalities coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, our main objective is to provide a five-star service to our clients without compromising the health, safety and well-being of our employees.

At the end of the day, our achievement at the airport is much more than statistics. The success and great economical results can only be achieved if there’s teamwork, respect, collaboration and innovation and this is what we try to create everyday, a workplace full of challenges and continuous learning.