Turkish delight

22 December 2016


Liebherr has supplied 58 tower cranes for the construction of the IGA Airport in Istanbul. Sotiris Kanaris reports on the bidding process as well as the actions taken to deliver these cranes within a short time frame.

The new Istanbul airport (IGA) is to be built on a site of 7,650 hectares in four phases by 2028, making it the largest airport in the world. The floor area of the main terminal alone is 130 hectares.

Upon completion, up to 3,500 flights will be cleared for take off and landing on a total of six runways, serving up to 200 million passengers per year. The construction costs are estimated to exceed €10bn euros.

Construction work started in mid- 2014 with the earthworks and the first phase is due to be completed at the start of 2018. In the summer of 2016, there were more than 13,000 people and around 2,000 construction machines working on the site.

The construction of additional take-off and landing runways as well as another terminal by the end of 2022 will mark the end of the second and third phases.

Liebherr started the negotiations with the site management in March 2015. Dominique Tasch, managing director at Liebherr-Werk Biberach says: “Like the project as a whole, the timeframe for the negotiations was very challenging.”

The initial negotiations were conducted by Liebherr’s market manager for Turkey, Rüdiger Boeck. “During this phase it was not possible to achieve an agreement with the site management since, as in the case with all major projects, our competitors were also fighting for the order,” says Tasch.

Liebherr continued the negotiations with its sales managing director and the company’s sales team, securing the order on May 12, 2015. Apart from the Liebherr delegation, the manager of the site consortium and the chief buyer for the project also took part in the final negotiations.

The order consisted of ten 154 EC-H, 32 280 EC-H, and 16 200 EC-H tower cranes.

The first cranes had to be delivered at the end of June, just a few weeks after signing the contract. “The main criteria for winning the order were the capacity of our tower cranes along with the extremely short lead times which we were able to provide,” says Tasch.

As a result of Liebherr’s longterm close collaboration with the contractors involved, it was able to provide consultancy services to the customer from the start of the project.

Danyel Temizkan, managing director at Liebherr Makine Ticaret Servis, says: “The clarification of the technical requirements, enhancing the site organisation by selecting the right equipment and the coordination of commercial modalities were conducted by our highly qualified staff in close collaboration with their counterparts at the manufacturing plant in Biberach.”

Temizkan adds that the customer also appreciated the company’s ability to provide local invoicing and support for the completion of all logistics, customs clearance and tax matters.

“We can ensure the maximum availability of all cranes by having five fitters permanently stationed on the site,” he says.

To coincide with the delivery of the first tower crane, Liebherr established a spare parts warehouse specially compiled for the crane types in use and stationed this warehouse on the site.

Temizkan says this enables the company to minimise the delivery times for spare parts.

Regular visits by technical personnel from the Biberach manufacturing plant ensures the advice and training for the customer continues on a permanent basis.

Speedy delivery

Liebherr delivered the last tower crane to Istanbul on schedule on December 21, 2015.

Prior to the order, the production facilities were already running at high speed. At the Liebherr tower crane factory, on average, the production time for a crane from the start of the structural steelwork to the final inspection is eight weeks.

The manufacturer’s internal demand planning works with over 6,000 active production orders resulting in around 32,000 work processes. These are split into outsourced parts, production parts and assembly work.

Günther Hardock, managing director at Liebherr-Werk Biberach, says: “When a major order is received, the Liebherr Tower Cranes Division has access to a global network of production sites.

This enables us to manufacture components at different sites so that we can react flexibly to possible capacity bottlenecks.”

Hardock says that Liebherr was able to create the additional capacities required to manage the IGA order very quickly. “In detail, these efforts comprised 35% purchase capacity, 15% outsourcing, 25% leased personnel and 25% overtime by our own workforce,” he explains.

Networked production was key in the process, with the company relocating the production of structural steel components, such as corner posts for tower section production to its sister plant in Pamplona Spain.

Multiplier effect

The IGA project is not the only major project order Liebherr has received in Turkey, where it opened its own sales and service company eight years ago.

In 2013, it won a tender issued by the ‘Director General for State Water Matters’ for a total of 130 crawler cranes. These machines were delivered in 2014 and 2015.

At the end of 2014, Liebherr won another tender from the same authority for a total of 50 duty cycle crawler cranes with dragline buckets. Once again these were delivered in two tranches by the beginning of 2016.

Last year, the turnover of the Liebherr Group in Turkey exceeded €100m.

Temizkan talks about the “multiplier effect” of successfully participating in such a prestigious project.

“It is important to know that Turkish building contractors not only handle major projects in Turkey, but also throughout the region,” he says.

According to a study by Engineering News Record, more than 40 building contractors based in Turkey are among the 250 largest building contractors in the world. These building contractors complete very large projects in the Middle East, Africa, Russia and various CIS countries.

“The successful completion of a project of this nature in Turkey will enable Liebherr to demonstrate its technical, logistical and financial capacities. We are very confident that this will have a certain leverage effect for future projects in all these regions. This track record will open us new possibilities for us, not only for tower cranes but also for other Liebherr business units,” Temizkan adds.

Liebherr is also celebrating another major order for an airport construction project, after receiving an order to deliver 23 Liebherr EC-B series Flat-Top cranes for extending the airport in Santiago de Chile.

The airport construction site, where 58 Liebherr tower cranes are working
Tower sections at Biberach
Working on a tower crane upper structure at Biberach