Across the board, growth in the aviation industry has been accompanied by the need to develop all sorts of support infrastructure, including hangars and maintenance facilities.
Building a new hangar can be a lengthy process if you do it the traditional way, but Belgian firm Spantech is offering a new, more straightforward approach.
In October 2024, Spantech stunned the industry with the announcement that it had completed a huge hangar capable of housing either an Airbus A380 aircraft or four narrowbody aircraft simultaneously at Spain’s Teruel Airport (TEV) in under six months.
This facility, which was built for French maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) firm Tarmac Aerosave, boasts 34-meter-high walls and a 95-meter span, and was built with a modular constructive technology, referred to as ‘Construction 2.0.’ by Spantech.
What Spantech has done is refine and adapt to the specific needs and scale of the aviation industry. This is an approach that has served it well when building large functional buildings for other use cases, such as sports centers, concert halls and even film studios.
“We have a philosophy that we call ‘Construction 2.0.’ which focuses on the efficiency of the processes and is applicable to several types of buildings, particularly those that have a lot of height and large spans, which are our specialty,” Romain Genot, project lead at Spantech for the Teruel hangar project, told AeroTime. “We use off-site assembly techniques to shorten the construction period of a project and reduce the need for skilled labor.”
In the case of the Tarmac Aerosave A380 hangar, the structures were preassembled at the company’s facilities in Germany and Poland and then transported to Spain to be erected at the selected location.
It’s all about the system
“When it comes to aviation projects, most of the value is in what we do on-site. We have a very smart way of putting together the truss system we manufacture off-site,” Genot continued. “We have a patent on the foldability of our truss system. You have two parallel rafters, which are the structural beams and are connected by diagonals. You can remove those diagonals and transport the whole system to wherever you need to install it.”
Genot compared this way of doing things to the more traditional constructive approach other firms follow, which will involve building the hangar one element at a time.
“We do things differently; we first assemble the ceiling of the hangar on the ground,” he said. “This is laid out in modules, which are like the ribs of the structure. In Teruel, for example, each of the modules we’ve used to build the ceiling measures five by 95 meters. Then we fit out a liner on top and the electrical wiring. We can also add insulation, sprinkler systems, ventilation, whatever is needed, while on the ground. And then we lift it.”
This is the same method Spantech has used to build a film studios, which are currently used by the likes of Netflix, Amazon, and MGM.
“Another key difference is that our system is made of aluminum and, instead of being welded, it has holes that make up what we call ‘pre-assembly’. You can then fold it for transport,” said Derek de Villenfagne, the CEO of Spantech. “We can ship the same hangar to the United States or South America or the Middle East.”
“Our competitors, which use welded trusses, would have to use some sort of special transport to be able to do the same,” he added. “They would need to put it on top of a boat or something like that.”
De Villenfagne compared this to the methods used by local construction firms that are often contracted to build hangars the traditional way.
“You could do this in steel in the same way, but you’re not going to have the same ease of assembly,” he added, before referring to the example of Teruel. “It took only two to three days to erect the 16 meters high by 85 meters long facade because it is very simple. Everything is prefabricated. You don’t have to cut anything. You just fit and fasten some screws, and you are done.”
To illustrate this point, de Villenfagne shared a timelapse video of the construction of the Teruel A380 hangar with AeroTime, highlighting its quick progress. Several processes were conducted simultaneously, such as the ground assembly and lifting of several sections of the structure and fitting panels that would eventually become the walls of the hangar. This method not only reduces construction time, but also the need for skilled labor.
“You need some skilled personnel because you need to work at some height with specialized machinery,” he said. “But one of the great advantages, a proper revolution in the way to build, is that you don’t need a roofer or a specialist to clad the facade. And you don’t have as much need for electricians or plumbers, because much of what goes into the roof, we install on the ground with what we call a plug and play system.”
He continued: “All those accessories and technology, the cables, you fit them on the ground, and you lift them up. The specialist just needs to come on a given day to finish it up.”
De Villenfagne also explained how the height of a 50-ton hangar door was adjusted with millimetric precision by just one man using a range. This level of accuracy is made possible by designing and pre-assembling the different components in the factory instead of on-site. The controlled environment of the factory allows Spantech to ensure each component will work exactly as designed on a computer.
Spantech’s customers have a choice of materials and revetments to use on the walls and roof, but the structure is always covered with a roof liner made from plastic PVC. This element makes it possible to add panels for extra roof rigidity, which are used, for example, if the hangar owner wants to install solar panels on top.
The liner is also good for the hangar’s U-value (its insulating properties) and, importantly, for the customer’s perception. De Villenfagne explained how lots of customers want to “be able to knock on the roof and feel that they can walk on it”. It also makes the hangar watertight and acts like a membrane that helps the structure cope with the effects of temperature-induced dilation and contraction. This is particularly important when building in areas with big temperature oscillations, like the Middle East, where it is common to have 27-28 degrees of variation between day and night.
Spantech also offers customers a choice of insulation solutions. This can either be a relatively simple solution, which involves a double layer of PVC with an air cushion which is slightly inflated, or sandwiched panels with a water-tight liner on top for stronger insulation.
The PVC cushion solution provides good zenithal lighting when compared to covering the roof with panels, which makes the interior of the hangar darker. This is why, in places where the local climate permits, the air cushion is an interesting and aesthetically pleasing solution. In the case of Teruel, where temperatures can drop during the winter, a small heating system was also installed, but the overall trade-off was positive.
Spantech’s competitive position
Spantech sees traditional construction firms as its primary competitors. Genot highlighted how this is typically a lengthy process in which the hangar operator hires an architect and a structural engineering firm to carry out the design and will, more often than not, opt to do it in steel.
This, he explained, is usually a more expensive and less efficient approach, especially when building hangars for widebody aircraft.
“When we look at other projects, we sometimes see numbers that we feel are way too high for what is being built, and we tend to think we could do it cheaper,” Genot said. “But it’s hard to get a fair apples to apples comparison between different constructive systems. I would think that for widebody aircraft hangars, we tend to be less expensive than traditional construction.”
Genot also explained that, in addition to the firm’s MRO-specific know-how, Spantech’s system holds up well when compared to other methods in terms of maintenance requirements and costs. Spantech uses galvanized steel and aluminum, both materials highly resistant to corrosion. This prevents the need to paint the surfaces every year, as is the case with items made of steel. It’s low maintenance as a building.
De Villenfagne referred to the total cost of ownership, something particularly important when we are talking about buildings that can have a long working life, with some even lasting for up to 45 years.
Spantech can bring maintenance costs down to one third of traditional constructions, with de Villenfagne attributing this in great part to the use of membrane liners which provide good tolerance towards material fatigue and thermic-induced dilation and contraction.
Besides the financial aspects, though, which may vary from project to project, Spantech also highlighted predictability as one of the strong points of its construction process.
De Villenfagne said: “If you already know that your hangar will be ready in X number of months, you have more freedom to plan and take decisions.”
Capitalizing on systemized innovatio
De Villenfagne also outlined four elements of the Spantech value proposition, referring back to the company’s ‘Construction 2.0’ philosophy.
“What we mean by this is first, a controlled budget, because everything is pre-engineered in the factory, so there are no surprises, no waste, no loss,” he said. “Second, it is about planning. Third it is about being on-program, as requested by the customer. And the fourth one is about making a building which minimizes its environmental impact, including the fact that everything in our constructions is meant to be dismountable and reusable.”
Further to this, de Villenfagne defined the Spantech approach as “standardized made to order”, likening it to what he called “the IKEA model” in which there is a library of systems that were once developed to match a specific need and are now available to be used and combined.
“We also take ideas from one industry and bring them to another,” he continued. “For instance, in one project for the entertainment industry, we created a safe line for artists, a system with a beam made of extruded aluminum that you can connect by sections, because not every theater or studio has the same dimensions. So, when one of our customers in aviation had an accident in which a worker fell from an aircraft’s fuselage, we proposed adding that same safe line. And now we are installing it in our aviation projects. For example, we installed it in Teruel. That’s what we call systemized innovation.”
According to Spantech, its methodology allows it to complete projects at least three times as fast as some of its competitors.
“This is all the result of everything that we were mentioning before. A lot of off-site assembly, the design and integration of all the systems,” Genot added. “You don’t have to call some guy to come, look and then decide how he will do it. All of this is done months in advance, and we just execute it when we are on-site.”
Aside from the project it has completed for Tarmac Aerosave in Teruel, Spantech has also been working for companies in the aviation industry such as Lufthansa Technik, Aviolanda in the Netherlands, Sabena Engineering in Belgium, and Colombian airline Avianca.
“We see tremendous growth and we think Construction 2.0. brings a lot of flexibility to our customers because they can install the facilities on an apron relatively easily without owning the land. If, after years, their contract with the airport is not renewed, they can dismantle the building and reuse it elsewhere. This gives them a certain leverage in negotiations with the airport,” de Villenfagne added.
Airlines up-gauging fleets with larger narrowbody aircraft is another driver for increased hangar space demand. Add to this the fact that some current widebody aircraft, like the A350, have truly large wingspans and it is becoming harder for operators to find space in the existing hangars.
But Spantech has also devised some transitional solutions. For example, it created a movable hangar extension for Aviolanda, what it calls a “tail out box”, which makes it possible to fit a third aircraft inside the hangar.
Spantech builds hangars for widebody aircraft, a segment in which there is less competition (building hangars for smaller narrowbody aircraft is within the scope of many more local players). The company’s unique selling proposition appears clearer to end users.
“In just a few words, we design and build turnkey projects faster than traditional construction companies,” Genot said. “And most of the time at a better cost.”
Spantech will be exhibiting at MRO Europe 2024.