The opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport is undoubtedly a milestone event in British aviation history.  It is set to revolutionise the way that passengers experience air travel from the world’s busiest airport.  Around 30 million passengers will use the terminal each year; it is the largest freestanding building in the UK and Europe’s largest construction project.  The completion of this massive capital project is also a landmark event for Draka, which supplied much of the cabling that ensures that power is always provided to the essential life and property fire safety systems.

The Derby-based company has supplied its most advanced 0HLS [Zero Halogen, Low Smoke] cable solutions for the emergency lighting in the main terminal building and the terminal satellite building.  It also devised a new EMC [electro-magnetic compatibility] cable specially for the integrated fire alarm, voice alarm and public address system.  The company’s cabling is also installed in the extension of the Piccadilly Line for London Underground, and the Heathrow Express for Network Rail; along with cabling for the lighting in the three new tunnels on the airside taxi roads.  It is estimated that the combined total of all of the cabling used on the project tops the one million metre mark.

Draka’s Firetufplus Enhanced-category cable was chosen for the emergency lighting overturning an earlier decision to use mineral insulated cables.  Michael Cowell, Technical Development Manager for BAA, explains: “With the more stringent requirements for fire performance cables as set out in BS5839-1:2002, we assessed all of the Enhanced-category pliable cables on the market and decided that Draka’s Firetufplus fully met our quality and safety requirements.”

Draka’s product development team addressed concerns expressed by the fire detection and alarm system supplier, Gent by Honeywell, over the need for a high level of electro-magnetic immunity for the integrated fire alarm, voice alarm and public address systems within the terminal buildings.  The outcome was the introduction Firetuf EMC, a specially developed Standard-category cable with superior EMC characteristics.  This has proved so successful that it has since been added to the standard Draka cable offering. 

Barry Forrister, T5 Project Manager for Gent by Honeywell, comments: “We tested a number of cables and discovered that the Standard-category cables in the BAA specification performed below the level we required for the addressable speaker loops that operate at higher frequencies than conventional fire detector loops.”  He continues: “Both our own tests and those conducted by independent testing bodies confirmed that Firetuf EMC provides us with the high-integrity electro-magnetic immunity that is essential in an airport environment.” 

The rail and road infrastructure elements of the £4.3 billion project used Firetuf Connecta, Draka’s modular wiring system.  Network Rail’s tunnel for the Heathrow Express extension utilised 11.5km of Firetufpower cable with 718 factory-fitted Connecta sockets, while the Tube Lines’ tunnel for London Underground’s extension to the Piccadilly Line called for 12.5km of the cable with 708 Connecta sockets.  The airside roads – the northern and southern taxi roads – used 4.42km of Draka armoured cable with a total of 1,102 Connecta sockets.

The completion of the Terminal 5 project comes hard on the heels of the opening St Pancras International Station in London and Phase Two of the High Speed 1 Eurostar rail link – the country’s two largest mass transit construction projects for many decades.  Both entrusted the supply of reliable power to the fire safety and life support installations to Draka.