The opening of Heathrow’s new Terminal Five continues to generate many column inches of editorial comment. Initial descriptions of “one of the most breathtaking man-made spaces in modern Britain; a gleaming steel and glass silver machine”, gave way on its first day of operation to bitter howls of “Baggage Armageddon” by stranded passengers.

Of course, teething troubles are a predictable hazard with the inauguration of any new facility, but events industry professionals experienced cracks in the operation at T5 at least two weeks before the first passengers flew in from Hong Kong. On 14 March the Queen officially opened the terminal to an audience of 800 guests. Those of us involved in the preparation for this launch event lived through a logistical nightmare generated by the most basic lack of co-ordination and communication. It took a week for Gallowglass and production crews to put the hardware in place for the 26-minute ceremony, and people with 20 years of events industry experience described it as the most frustrating job they had ever worked on.

Ridiculous extremes
So what went wrong? The operational aspects of British Airports Authority’s (BAA’s) famously ‘robust’ new security measures had not been thought-through and the regulations had not been clearly communicated to the staff, because the rules changed daily and were taken to ridiculous extremes. Staging, lighting and sound equipment had to be unloaded land-side for the production that would be taking place air-side. This meant that earlier off-site checks had to be repeated, even down to the wooden flats that were scrupulously checked for possible explosives in the sap.

The excessive time required to gain security clearance meant that crews working 12-hour shifts often only managed to get two hours’ work done in any one day. And in spite of the fact that the building had been designed with plenty of lifts, few of them were working during the pre-opening phase and, forbidden from using escalators to travel between levels, frustrated crews had to wait for engineers to travel from Oxford to repair the lifts.

Priorities
The BAA was evidently aware of these problems and was apparently so concerned about delays in the completion of major mechanical and electrical work that it had applied to the Civil Aviation Authority to suspend Heathrow’s normal service quality obligations for several months. These are the targets on security queues and the availability of lifts and escalators, which, if not met, can normally result in Heathrow being fined.

The children’s nursery rhyme that tells how a battle was lost ‘all for the want of a horseshoe nail’ has a modern-day resonance with the priorities applied in the preparations for T5. Pre-opening press stories praised the design of its interior colour palette, the Gucci and Prada boutiques, and the Gordon Ramsay restaurant. If only the BAA could have applied the same degree of focus to the basic logistical cornerstones, such as adequate systems testing, staff training and parking facilities for baggage handlers. Then maybe British Airways wouldn’t have seen its share price nosedive dramatically, and the architectural and engineering triumph that is T5 might have escaped demonisation in the media as a ‘national humiliation’.

Nick Grecian is managing director of Gallowglass