Original subtitles

[narrator] In Germany, an elite team of engineers is embarking

on a colossal construction project.

They are building a new superhub

at one of Europe's busiest airports.

The team must battle surging groundwater,

a cramped site...

It's very difficult to move because of the size.

...and Mother Nature...

[speaking in German]

...to establish a vital transportation hub

that will handle up to 19 million passengers a year.

This mega airport ranks in a league of ambitious

new engineering wonders that are bigger, faster,

taller, and more advanced than anything

ever constructed before.

This is the inside story of the extraordinary challenge of

building these giants.

Frankfurt, Germany,

the financial capital of Europe,

where medieval buildings sit in the shadow

of some of Europe's tallest skyscrapers.

Located in the center of the city is a key

transportation hub with rail, river, and road links to

the rest of Europe and beyond.

Frankfurt Airport is the busiest in Germany,

with flights to and from more than 300 destinations.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise by 50%

in the next 10 years.

CEO Stefan Schulte must ensure the airport keeps up

with demand.

[speaking in German]

The airport has two terminals,

but with around 70 million passengers annually,

they are at maximum capacity.

[Stefan speaking in German]

Engineers cannot expand Terminals 1 or 2

because both are surrounded by highways and buildings,

so they're developing a brand-new terminal

to the south on the site of a former military base.

To build this 1.9 million square-foot mammoth hub,

the team constructs a vast main building for the check-in hall,

security, and departure lounge,

complete with 112 check-in counters.

From the terminal's core, three new boarding piers

stretch for nearly a combined mile across the airfield

to create more than 30 aircraft parking spaces.

A 226-foot-tall control tower oversees the traffic.

And a driverless people mover carries more than 8,000

travelers an hour between terminals.

Christoph Mäckler is the project's architect.

He envisions an efficient terminal

that eases the stress of air travel.

For me, it's very important to make a warm terminal,

a good-feeling terminal, where you feel good

as you feel at home.

Christoph's design keeps the entire airport experience

on one floor.

Passenger flow is very, very important

in such an airport.

Sometimes, if you look at the airports worldwide,

you go up and down and you don't find your way.

So this is why we said we have to do all the things

on one level in a way.

Turning Christoph's vision into reality is a huge logistical

and engineering challenge.

It's up to project manager Sven Fuchs to make it happen.

The size that Terminal 3 has, it's about 25 soccer fields.

It's more or less a new airport.

Building on such a massive scale requires a lot of land.

The chosen site presents engineers with a big challenge.

It's located on a waterlogged plateau.

This makes building the foundations for

the new terminal very difficult.

[Sven] If you're going below the five meters,

we have to deal with groundwater.

Doing the excavation in the water is purely

slowing you down, because now you have not only the soil

you have to control, meanwhile

you have also to control the water.

The team devises an ingenious plan to create a stable

and dry foundation.

First, they dig down 18 feet to the top of the water table.

Next, they divide the site into separate excavation fields.

They then line these zones with 7,700 tons of steel sheet piles

to hold back the saturated ground.

They dig each field down to 36 feet

to allow the groundwater to flood the pits.

Engineers then drive 3,500 micropiles into the ground to

support the concrete base.

A specialized rig pours underwater concrete to seal

the base and form a watertight seal.

Once the concrete is cured, pumps remove the water to

reveal the underground structure that will become

the basement of the terminal.

If the team isn't able to achieve a perfect seal

around the pit, the entire build could flood.

Failure is not an option.

[Sven] It's important because it's the basis for

the entire building.

You have to make surveys, you have to measure

the groundwater level, so you have to be sure that

you know what is waiting for you.

The engineers begin the excavation in 2015.

They use a fleet of excavators and trucks to remove

23.6 million cubic feet of earth

and create pits up to 36 feet deep.

The team stops when it reaches a depth of 16 feet.

Digging deeper will flood the pit and cause the walls

to collapse.

To prevent this, engineers install

495,000 square feet of steel sheets

to make retaining walls.

[Sven] The aim of the sheet piling is to stabilize the surrounding

ground area to avoid that sand and soil is falling

into the pit.

Now that the walls are installed,

the team digs the pits deeper.

But as expected, the groundwater soon seeps up

and fills the holes.

The next challenge is to seal the bottoms of the pits.

Engineers use a giant robotic arm to pump nearly

1.4 million cubic feet of special concrete

into the holes.

When the pump is running, a team of divers works for

hours at a time to guide

the hose along the floor of the pit.

[Sven] The work of the divers,

it's also work that needs to be done precisely because we're

laying the fundament for the entire building.

A month later, the concrete is completely cured.

It's time for the engineers to find out if the seal around

the pit is waterproof.

The bilge pumps fire up.

The water level in the pits drops.

And the team sees the concrete floor for the first time.

We can say that the finishing of the excavations and starting

pouring the concrete slab and then afterwards pumping out

the water was the first big success for the entire project.

By late 2019, the basement level is dry

and the building work can begin.

Engineers in Germany are building the brand-new

Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport.

They've sunk foundations into waterlogged ground to give this

mega-building a firm base.

Now it's time to erect the structures above ground.

19 million passengers every year will pass through

Terminal 3's check-in hall.

To keep the crowds flowing, architect Christoph Mäckler

designs an open-plan layout with a 59-foot-high ceiling.

It's a huge room.

And you feel welcome.

You don't get nervous to find your way.

You just know where you are and where you have to go.

Engineers must top this structure with a 355,000

square-foot steel roof,

the equivalent of about seven football fields.

This is the roof. And it's not only a roof.

It's a room, a room for technical systems,

which you need for the hall.

But building and installing this giant roof is

a huge challenge.

The first stage is to erect the reinforced-concrete walls

and floors of the lower two levels.

The team then installs the 30 steel columns

for the check-in hall.

Next, they build a 59-foot-tall temporary steel structure

with five horizontal tracks across the roof.

They use a crane to assemble each of the five nearly

1,800-ton roof sections.

A hydraulic cable system then pulls each one along

the tracks, one after another, into their final position.

Once all five sections are in place,

the temporary structure is removed.

Any mistakes during this process could be catastrophic.

[Sven] When moving such big parts, you have to make sure that

every piece works fine, because if some piece or some

of the steel supporting structure or the hydraulic

presses are broken,

then you will get misalignment of the structure.

Over the next two years, the team builds the walls

and floors at the two lower levels.

Workers pour 7 million cubic feet of concrete

and cut 66,000 tons of steel.

They then erect a 59-foot-high steel skeleton to support

the roof of the check-in hall.

Now the team must tackle

the most challenging part of the build,

installing the enormous roof of the check-in hall.

The pressure is on for project manager Stefan Sorli.

[speaking in German]

Engineers connect hydraulic presses to the roof section

using steel cables.

With the system in place,

they drag the first section into position.

Slowly but surely, the section advances about

a foot at a time.

As it moves across the rails, even small variations in forces

across the roof section could spell disaster.

To stop this, the team uses

smart presses that automatically correct a twist.

[Stefan Sorli in German]

Stefan's team constantly monitors the roof section

to spot any dangerous misalignment.

It's painstaking work.

Finally, the first roof section is in place.

Stefan and his team continue to place all of the roof sections.

Specialized crews can now

install the terminal's air conditioning,

power,

and networking infrastructure.

[Sven] To put a roof like this together, it's a team effort.

And therefore, all of the people, all of the teams

that worked on it, we are very proud of them.

It's a big milestone in the build of this megaterminal.

But more challenges lie ahead for Sven and his team.

Engineers in Germany are building an ambitious

new terminal at Frankfurt Airport.

When completed,

it will serve 19 million passengers every year.

To board them comfortably and on time, the terminal needs

33 gates with jet bridges.

And Terminal 3 will have long, narrow structures called piers

to accommodate that many gates.

We see here one of the piers.

You have three levels here, two passenger levels on ground

and first floor.

You need the overhang here because you have a free street

for the buses for transportation and so on.

Special Y-shaped columns will support this overhang.

[Christoph] So we need here columns

which don't disturb the flow

on the airfield.

You get more free space between the columns.

Instead of two columns, which are going to the ground,

you have only one column.

Terminal 3 needs three piers up to 2,000 feet in length.

They must be this big to deal with a large volume of

passengers and planes, as well as hold the ventilation system.

But building structures this long from concrete creates

a big challenge.

Concrete shrinks as it dries.

The piers will fracture

if they're built as single lengths.

Project manager Christian Bierend and his team

devise a solution.

[speaking in German]

This is how his team will do it.

Workers will build the pier as eight separate

smaller structures.

In between each is a three-foot gap.

Next, they will erect 86 Y-shaped supports along

the sides of the pier sections

before they cast the concrete

for the overhanging floor on top.

They will then use more concrete to fill in the gaps

between the eight structures and create one long pier.

On top, they will install a huge steel frame to house

the ventilation systems.

Finally, they will attach 14 jet bridges to allow passengers

to move between the terminal and aircraft.

In early 2019, the team begins constructing the shells for

Pier H and Pier J.

It's a huge logistical challenge.

You have to bring together the concrete manufacturer,

you have to bring the scaffolding in,

and, of course, you have also

to avoid that you are interfering with

the airport itself.

Workers cast the floors and walls from thousands of

tons of concrete with steel rebar inside for reinforcement.

[Sven] So we're using here for most of the buildings

reinforced concrete.

The concrete itself, it's to carry the load,

and the reinforced parts within it are for the tension.

With the concrete sections in place,

the engineers' next challenge is to install the Y-shaped

supports that hold up the roofs of the piers.

The 86 supports for Pier J are made in a factory and then

brought to the site.

[Sven] When you are doing it in a plant, you get a better

quality, especially on the surface.

And then just install it, erect it,

and you are faster on site.

Once on site, a truck-mounted crane lifts

each 25-ton column.

The team must then carefully guide them into place to rest

at a seven-degree angle.

Once all 86 columns are installed, the team builds

the passenger level.

Next, they install the giant roof trusses onto the top floor

of the structure that will carry vital ventilation

and electrical systems.

To do this, the team uses a gigantic crawler crane.

It's a delicate operation.

[Sven] The job of a crane driver is very unique and special.

I mean, he carries all the responsibility

for the lift.

Most of the times, he even cannot see where he is

lifting to which position,

so he's also relying on other people.

The final challenge is to attach the jet bridges.

These are the movable walkways that connect the piers directly

to the aircraft doors.

But getting them to the site is no simple task.

Christian Belser is in charge of the installation.

[Christian Belser in German]

As the sun rises, the team starts the operation.

But the weather takes a turn for the worse.

[Christian Belser in German]

Workers battle the wind to wrestle

the 66-foot-long bridge into position.

With the job done, Christian checks that

the electrical systems are working correctly.

This jet bridge is now ready for action,

and the next crucial stage of construction can begin.

Engineers in Germany are building a mega terminal

at Frankfurt Airport.

Aircraft arriving and departing the new Terminal 3 must

navigate the network of taxiways between the runway

and the ramp, or "apron."

The ramp is the paved area where aircraft

are parked, loaded, and fueled.

Jörn Muthmann leads a team of controllers that directs

aircraft to and from the ramp and the runway.

[Jörn] The most important thing is to avoid conflict on the apron

between arriving and departing aircraft.

And if there would be nobody taking care of organizing

the traffic on the surface, then you would have a chaos.

Controllers need an uninterrupted line of sight

to the terminal's full ramp.

The problem is the existing control tower for Terminals 1

and 2 has no clear view of the Terminal 3 ramp.

So the team needs to build

a new 226-foot-tall concrete tower.

On top, they must then install a control room with

a 300-degree view of Terminal 3's ramp.

It's a huge engineering challenge.

[Sven] When erecting an apron tower with 69 meters high,

you only can do it in parts because you have to consider

that the concrete needs to dry out before

moving on to the next level.

To overcome this, engineers use a technique

called "climbing formwork."

They cast the walls and floors of the tower in sections.

When the concrete for one layer is cured,

the team then raises the formwork

up to the next level.

[Sven] Using a climbing formwork gives you the benefit that

you can do the first and second floor, you do the learning

there, and then you just move on,

and from level to level, you will get faster.

It takes workers six months to complete the concrete tower

and build the steel skeleton of the control room.

Now they can start work on the panoramic windows.

Senior construction manager Benedikt Goldbach

oversees this task.

Each pane of glass weighs almost 2,000 pounds.

The team must lift all 15 panes nearly 200 feet into the air

and install them with pinpoint accuracy.

It's delicate work.

Contact with a piece of scaffolding on the way up

could damage a pane.

The team's solution is to attach each pane

to 12 supersized suction pads.

A crane then lifts the glass to the control room.

[Sven] We have to make sure that we handle all the glass panels

carefully, because they are very heavy, very expensive,

and of course just made for our project.

The lift begins.

The glass makes it to the top of the tower.

Workers inside the control room then maneuver

the pane into the window.

It takes the team two weeks to put in all 15 panes.

Another team then installs its computer

and electrical systems.

[Jörn] Well, we are in the brand-new apron control tower south.

It's definitely one of the best views here on the airport.

We have an altitude of 69 meters.

This huge altitude helps to have the full picture of

the whole apron here in the south.

From here, Jörn's team will coordinate the takeoffs

and landings for the 19 million passengers who will pass

through Terminal 3 every year.

The next challenge is how to get passengers to the new

terminal in the first place.

A team of engineers in Germany is racing to complete

the new Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport.

Many passengers flying from the airport arrive

at its train station and move between terminals 1 and 2

via a monorail.

Engineers must build a new transportation system that can

ferry 8,000 people every hour between all three of

the airport's terminals.

Wolfgang Holzhausen is in charge of the project.

We decided to construct or develop a new system

independent from the existing system, with 5.6 kilometers

long, a new track here for the new system, and you can go

directly here to the Terminal 3.

This is how Wolfgang and his team will do it.

They will build an elevated railway that runs between a new

station at Terminal 1, around the airfield,

to a station at Terminal 3.

They must install 310 giant concrete girders to

support the track.

The approach to Terminal 1 is the most challenging section.

Engineers must install 47 concrete pillars that raise up

the track 43 feet to meet the new station.

The existing buildings here make the space tight.

So the engineers must carefully thread the final two girders

between two cranes to complete the job.

Work on the super sky train begins in July 2019.

The first challenge is building the raised sections of track.

Over three years, the team installs the 47

concrete frames that hold up

the elevated parts of the track.

The next challenge is to place

the girders on top of the frames.

Self-propelled modular transporters bring each

220-ton girder to site.

The girders are so heavy and unwieldy that the team must

use a pair of mighty cranes to lift them from each end.

The cranes lift the girders directly from the transporters,

swing them to the install site,

and lower them into position.

It's very difficult to move because of the size

and the weight they have.

If a girder twists or slips, it could spell disaster.

Over the course of three years, the team installs 310 girders,

and constructs the new stations for the sky train.

Today, the team must lift the final two steel girders

into place at the station for Terminal 1.

They've saved the most difficult lift for last.

[Wolfgang] Here's a very narrow area

because we have the Sheraton Hotel here

and the Terminal 1 at the other side,

and in between there are all these roads,

so the place to put the cranes for lifting the girders is

very, very narrow here.

The Terminal 1 station is beside a narrow road that

must be clear when the airport is open,

so the team must do this lift in darkness when the airport is

closed, and they must complete it in under five hours.

The margin for error is slim.

The team must weave the 75-foot-long, 14-ton beam

through the gap between the crane booms.

If they get this wrong,

the beam could crash into one of the cranes.

After four hours, the beam slots perfectly

into place.

We did a good job with all the team.

And yeah, it was a really great challenge.

And yeah, we did it at last.

The final components are the trains that will take up to

8,000 passengers between terminals 1, 2,

and 3 every hour.

The problem is traditional metal train wheels are slow.

They must accelerate gently and brake early

to prevent wheel spin.

This adds critical seconds to every journey.

The solution is this special two-carriage train made in

a factory in Austria.

It has rubber tires that have more grip than metal wheels.

Artur Lier is in charge of getting the trains ready for

Terminal 3's opening.

What is the benefit here

for this -- let's say for the wheels?

We are much faster.

So we can accelerate much faster than with the metal

wheels, and we can brake much faster.

So we can actually transport more people.

But vehicles with tires have no rails to steer them.

So the engineers build in a guide rail that ensures

the train stays on the track.

What we have here is a fully automated train.

In the middle of the rail or on the floor, what you can see

here is a kind of guiding rail,

and this is how we are actually

able to steer the whole vehicle.

The SkyLine is almost ready to receive its first passengers.

It's very exciting to see finally the system running,

what was working for years to achieve it.

I'm definitely proud.

Now the team must test every system before Terminal 3 opens

to the public.

A team of engineers races to finish Frankfurt Airport's

new Terminal 3.

Workers install security systems,

prepare the marketplace area for the first passengers,

and test the baggage handling system.

The designers of Terminal 3 want the experience of using it

to be as frictionless as possible.

So they run special trial days with volunteers to iron out

any kinks ahead of its opening.

Max Schulze Schwienhorst is in charge of the trials.

[Max] A trial day is a day where we test our processes

here in Terminal 3.

So, starting from the curbside arrival of the passengers,

going through check-in, security control, up to

the boarding gate, and then on the way back also look at

the arrival process.

So, arriving at the fixed bridge,

going to baggage reclaim, and then also

leaving the terminal.

All 300 passengers must make it to their gates on time,

and every piece of luggage

must be delivered to the right place.

The first test is for the sky train to ferry

passengers from the train station to Terminal 3

in just eight minutes.

[recording] Please do not leave any luggage on the train.

The passengers board

and the train sets off.

It has no driver.

An operator in a control room monitors the journey.

The train travels at nearly 50 miles per hour.

It arrives at Terminal 3 right on time.

The passengers step off the sky train into

the magnificent check-in hall with its towering

59-foot-tall ceiling.

Their next stop is the baggage drop.

Around the world, nearly 28 million bags are lost,

stolen, or delayed each year.

Terminal 3 aims to eliminate baggage problems to make

the passenger experience as smooth as possible.

[Max] The baggage system for us is extremely important,

as it's handling thousands of bags of our passengers.

And these passengers want to arrive with their bag

at their destination.

On average, airlines mishandle around 6.3 in every 1,000 bags.

The staff at Terminal 3 aims to

lose no bags during today's trial.

So ideally, we see 600 bags in our outbound baggage hall,

by the end of the day at the right destination.

Terminal 3 is one of the first to install a new smart baggage

handling system.

It should ensure that every bag

makes it onto the correct plane.

Today, it is being tested under real-world conditions.

[Max] The baggage handling system itself is a complex system

that, from a mechanical perspective, but also from

an IT and programming perspective, that needs to be

tested quite well.

The system is called Luggage Recognition

Artificial Intelligence, or LuRAI.

It is the responsibility of Rolf Felkel to make sure that

it correctly logs and tracks every bag.

LuRAI is a solution that we have developed,

a special computer vision model that we have built on our own,

and we have trained it to generate a kind of fingerprint

for each bag in the baggage handling system.

LuRAI takes photographs of a bag from multiple angles

to document its color, shape,

and distinguishing features.

So we compute the fingerprint once, we compute it twice,

and then we compare the two fingerprints.

And if they are identical,

then we know exactly, OK, this is the right bag.

Each piece of luggage also travels in a tub fitted

with a microchip.

As the tubs move through the system, scanners on

the conveyors read the chips and steer the bags to

the correct destination.

[Rolf] In the end of the day, the user experience is improved

by this kind of technology,

because the rate that a passenger is missing his luggage

at his destination airport is much lower.

With bags checked in, the passengers

head to security.

Lines at security gates are backing up.

At peak times, waits of more than an hour are common at

many airports.

Frankfurt wants to slash that time.

Our goal is that passengers

don't wait longer than 10 minutes.

To meet that target, Terminal 3 has redundancy built in,

to handle peak demand and bypass breakdowns.

[Katie] If some lane is not working,

we can switch to different lanes here because

we definitely have enough capacity.

Lanes use smart cameras that read the lines to automatically

adjust the length by opening or closing barriers.

As hoped, the average wait time for passengers in today's trial

is just 10 minutes.

[Katie] It's really precious to identify system failures

and the system bugs in advance, as you can imagine, because now

we still have enough time

to eliminate and to fix such things.

Finally, the passengers make it to their gates.

Not one bag is lost, and the passengers breeze

through the terminal.

The trial is a huge success.

Frankfurt's Terminal 3 will boost passenger numbers

by 19 million every year,

and cement Frankfurt as a major European transportation hub.

This remarkable engineering feat is a testament to

the ingenuity of the hundreds of workers that built it.

This is what we worked for the last years, day and night.

I'm very proud because it was very difficult to do this.

At the end,

it's a fantastic building, and it works.

It's been years in the making, but now this giant new terminal

has come to life.