Content for id "mainimage" Goes Here
Vehicle damage recording takes off at Manchester Airport in a big way
From its beginnings in 1937 as Ringway Airport, Manchester airport is now the third largest airport in the uk, with over 20million passengers per year and over 35,000 car parking spaces.
Within the car parks business, customer security and confidence is paramount and Verdant Technologies were delighted to be invited to tender for Manchester Airport’s new vehicle condition screening system or “vehicle damage recording” (VDR) as it is also known, to be installed at all three of the airport’s terminals.
We provided proposals for construction at T2 to be followed by T3 and T1 so that the project could be carried out over a single timeframe and capital outlay.
As with most designs, the existing roadway layout and kerbing were a constraining factor, such that the canopy design and cabling needed to fit in within the existing layout.
It was also important to carry out solar plots for each canopy location so that the canopy size, positioning and orientation could be designed to provide the optimum screening against sun-shadow on vehicles, particularly for low sun angles during the winter months.
With both aesthetics and functionality in mind a low pitch mono-pitch canopy was proposed and this would be supplied by our partner company 3 Counties Steel Buildings Ltd.
The construction phase took place in October 2013 and was completed in November with all three canopies being built and commissioned whilst car park operations continued with minimal disruption to normal service.
The 48 camera system uses eight cameras per lane for all round vision of the vehicle. Each terminal has a dual lane capability to ensure that customers are not delayed during busy peak times.
The system also incorporates ANPR camera number plate recognition for each lane so that vehicle images can easily be retrieved. With typically over 1500 vehicles being logged per day, the ability to quickly search by number plate and time and date is crucial to the performance of the system.
“Searching and identifying vehicles using the number plate lookup takes only seconds and the image quality allows you to zoom in and see even small scratches and dents on vehicles” says Dominic Kershaw, Head of Operational Planning, passenger services.
“We were very pleased with the installation build quality and attention to detail by Verdant’s Team” says Gary Knowles, Projects Manager for Manchester Airport.
Further installations for additional VDR systems are now in planning to meet the expanding car parking requirements for Manchester Airports Group in 2014/15.