Dublin Airport IAA Visual Control Tower

Quinn Piling were contracted by BAM to construct the piled foundations for the new Visual Control Tower and base buildings at Dublin Airport, with design by ARUP.

Due to predicted growth in airtraffic at Dublin Airport and the fact that the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) provides navigation services covering over 90% of the Europe/USA air traffic a new Control centre was required. The new iconic Visual Control Tower (VCT) for the Irish Aviation Authority comprises three separate but integrated building elements: the control cab, the cab supporting shaft and a base building. The base building accommodates staff facilities, electronic systems and mechanical plant space to provide control of the building environment.

The Control Tower sits on a massive 2.25m thick reinforced concrete raft foundation supported on rotary-bored piles.

Piling Scope and Details

The works comprised the boring and construction of 36 no. 900mm diameter piles with depths up to 18 metres and with a minimum rock-socket of five metres. The deep rock socket was required because of the variability of the depth and quality of the upper zone of rock. Each pile base was inspected by camera.

ARUP’s pile design was successfully verified by way of a 10MN static load test on a preliminary pile. The test pile reinforcement cage was extensively instrumented with strain gauges and extensometers fitted to analyse the performance of the pile at various depths including within the rock socket.

In addition, cross-hole sonic-logging instrumentation was installed into seven of the working piles to verify the quality of the pile construction.