Airfield ground lighting isn’t just important—it’s critical to safe and efficient airport operations. Clear, reliable runway lighting protects everyone in the air and on the ground, reducing risk and ensuring smooth takeoffs, landings, and ground movements.

So, you have to plan for every eventuality.

And when international air standards only give you a window of 15 seconds for backup lighting to kick in, it’s a challenge to design and implement a power centre and generator system that can meet those standards.

Leveraging our technical knowledge and experience, we were able to execute the installation of a new power centre at Auckland Airport to specification and within scope.

 

The Scope

Building a brand-new power centre to supply airfield ground lighting

This unique project consisted of a new power centre at Auckland Airport to supply power for airfield ground lighting, taxiway lighting, and runway lighting.

Lighting is an essential element of airport safety, and with strict safety regulations to adhere to careful planning is required to ensure all standards are met. The sheer magnitude of output this power centre required added more layers of complexity to the job.

It’s not just about the supply that, it is also the resilience that the entire system needs to ensure constant lighting in such a key area of the airport. It meant the design, planning and installation of dual supplies of mains power, along with dual generators that synchronise and are each capable of running the building by itself, along with backing each other up in case of power failure.

This included an entire uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system to hold up the connection between the two generators, a lightning protection system and two communication rooms. The power centre would have the eventual capacity to hold 72 CCRS, which supply power to the apron and runway lighting, delivering circuits at 3000V. Always with an eye on the future, the power centre would have 7 CCRS in place to begin with, but the capacity to easily add more when the second runway is implemented.

This was no small system!

 

The Challenges

Meeting the requirements of strict international safety standards

15 seconds is not a lot of time. This is especially true when international standards demand that two enormous generators have the facility to turn on, power up, sync to the system and engage power to the switchboard, all within 15 seconds, so there is no downtime in the ground lighting.

That was the first challenge of this project – to proactively design a way for this to happen whenever there was a hint of a risk to the mains power feeding the airfield ground lighting.

The next challenge was the fact that we had to manage and oversee a large number of subcontractors. First was DGE’s responsibility of designing the combined HV/LV/LPS (Lightning Protection System) certified earthing system, air terminals and down conductors, for which DGE engaged a specialist engineer to work alongside. We also had the containment, communications, security, CCTV and generators all under our management. The planning and coordination required to ensure everyone was where they needed to be for each stage of the project was vast.

The final challenge was the project timeline. Each aspect has been carefully planned to ensure all milestones are achieved. The team also needed to ensure elements of the building were operational earlier than practical completion.  The project was managed to ensure the room was operational when needed, and fully compliant with our high standards at project completion.

 

The Delivery

One year to power the current and future airfields

When you have a year to implement a complex and technical system, you know it is going to take some proactive project management to guarantee completion on time.

As soon as we broke ground at the start of the project, time was ticking! We knew the success of the project relied on careful management of every trade involved and the smooth process of them all working together.

Like every project, there were developments that needed to be accounted for. That meant our careful plans had to evolve, as each development arose, strategies were modified and resourced accordingly. Our skill and experience working in the airport sector allowed this to happen seamlessly.

 

The Outcome

Great benefits for everyone involved in the project

This project was unique in many ways. Firstly, the precision required to design and execute the Airport’s new power centre was second to none. Proactive project management, meticulous planning, and a skilled ground team all made this possible.

But this project also had a unique outcome for our team. Because it involved so many different project elements, this job was a fantastic development opportunity for our apprentices. They got to experience pretty much every aspect that the commercial industry has to offer in one project, which not only boosts their training and strengthens their individual skills, but in turn, it also strengthens DGE’s entire skill pool.

So, if you would like to tap into the skill and expertise of our team for your next project, we are ready and willing to help! Get in touch with our team today to discuss your requirements.