Terminal 2: The Queen’s Terminal was opened on 4 June 2014, designed to transform the traveller experience as we know it.

Approximately 35,000 people worked on this major project over its lifetime, consisting of 35 consultants across Operations Consulting, IT & Communications Systems, Marketing, and Programme & Project Management. Throughout the project, we collaborated with stakeholders to gain buy-in from the wider Heathrow community, helping to integrate the terminal’s standard operating procedures in a simple yet effective manner.

Together with Heathrow’s operational readiness team, Arup trialled and tested terminal processes and delivered familiarisation training for the 25,000 terminal staff. By the time of opening, the terminal had undergone over 175 trials, and in addition had been tested by a remarkable 14,000 people.

Terminal 2 was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on 23 June 2014, nearly 60 years after she opened the original terminal. It will eventually serve 20 million passengers per year and be home to 23 Star Alliance airlines, as well as Aer Lingus and Germanwings.

Project phases

To aid delivery, the project is broken up into distinctive teams:

Process

Stakeholder engagement was critical to achieving buy-in from the wider Heathrow community and to ensure stakeholders understood their relationship to key processes documented.

Proving

Together with Heathrow, Arup planned, designed and supported the delivery of over 175 proving trials. These tested individual terminal operations, such as check-in, to large-scale trials that test the complete passenger journey. The larger trials involved 2,500 people and included the use of electronic feedback. Nearly 14,000 in total helped us test efficiently test Terminal 2 before opening to the public.

People

Arup identified, planned, designed, and delivered training for the 25,000 terminal staff. We designed familiarisation, induction and training courses to make sure staff understood new processes, systems, and health safety measures for their role. This included identifying logistic requirements for training delivery, designing training scripts and maps, and a training assurance process.  

Programme Management Office (PMO)

Given the scale and complexity of the operational readiness programme, the PMO was critical in managing our work clearly and with structure. We established a strong PMO to define the expectations around outcomes and performance, and managed them on a monthly basis through reporting.

Due to the breadth of information, we set up a monthly operational readiness-wide dashboard and helped Heathrow improve the programme’s performance through setting up change, issues management and go/no go processes.

Inside terminal 2 at Heathrow
The new Terminal 2 building has been designed specifically around the needs of the passenger.
External entrance to T2 at Heathrow
Terminal 2 marks the latest phase of an £11 billion transformation of Heathrow.