17
April
2020
|
15:06
Europe/Amsterdam

Smart maintenance while Schiphol is quiet

There are very few travellers at Schiphol right now, which presents us with an opportunity to carry out maintenance. We’re continuing to clean in many parts of the airport so it will be spic and span for when air traffic resumes. 

Making good progress
Maintenance is an ongoing process at Schiphol. This mainly takes place overnight the airport is being fully used. It is quiet at night and does not inconvenience people. We also do a lot of phased work because there are times when we can’t finish everything before the airport fills up again. Right now, we don’t have to account for busy days at the airport, which is why maintenance is moving fast.

From water pipes to fibre optic cables
We have replaced the drinking water pipe valves in Departures and Arrivals 3, which would normally be quite a complicated job if the airport were full. It meant the shut-down of the entire drinking water supply for Departures and Arrival, which nobody would want under normal circumstances – but now is the right time without travellers around. We are also working on the expansion of security lane numbers in Departures 4 and will establish extra passport control counters in Departures 3. There is also a lot of I.T. maintenance works, like software updates, placing screens and rolling-out our fibre optic network. 

Runway maintenance and road works
Of course, maintenance takes place both inside and outside at Schiphol. The landing strip is being repaired and we are working on the road. Road works are never really work out fully, particularly when it comes to our busiest access road. That road runs from the Schiphol exit on the A4 to Departures. However, we need to refinish the road surface from time to time. Phased planning was created earlier, and we worked out the details in order to minimise the inconvenience that could be caused to travellers. However, those plans were jettisoned when we could accelerate practically all works in the coming weeks 

Safety first
Safety always comes first at Schiphol, as it does now. It’s an important basic condition to be able to work at a distance of 1.5 meters from each other. If that can’t occur for various reasons, then the work is moved to a time when that is possible.