Honolulu airport chooses Kiwi technology — Exporter Magazine
One of the United States’ busiest airports has chosen a New Zealand company to provide the world’s most sophisticated baggage handling and software technology to its 21 million passengers each year.
BCS Group subsidiary, BCS North America Inc., has completed a multi-million dollar contract for the upgrade and refurbishment of Hawaii’s Honolulu International Airport, including state of the art explosives detections equipment.
According to BCS North America project manager Niall Teh, the innovation embedded in BCS’ 3D software and controls was key to being selected as a supplier for this high profile project and differentiated the company from competitors.
BCS’s involvement in the US$61 million Explosive Detection System (EDS) Integration Improvement project was the company’s second major win in the US, following on its previous project in Maui and has been instrumental in BCS winning further US contracts with major wins at St. Louis Lambert Airport in Missouri and Daytona Airport in Florida
The project in Honolulu was partially funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and sees new and upgraded Baggage Handling Systems in four lobbies in the International Terminal.
It has over 620 new conveyors, 16 Explosive Detection Systems (EDS), and four state-of-the-art explosive trace detection rooms.
BCS was contracted by the project’s baggage handling system contractor, Utah-based Five Star Airport Alliance Inc, to supply systems intelligence via its Low Level Control (LLC), Maintenance and Diagnostic System (MDS), and High Level Control (HLC) products for the entire project.
“A large number of changes were required during the project, and Five Star Airport Alliance saw the unique ability to use our proprietary NZ developed Sym3 3D simulation and virtual commissioning software as pivotal to managing risk during the several phases of construction,” commented Niall.
BCS’ latest version of High Level Controls software, Airflow G5, handles all the sortation, database and reporting functionality for the new baggage handling system. Operators use revolutionary 3D SCADA software to monitor and control the four BHS systems, with 3D visualisation and live display of all bags in the system enabling proactive decision making and increased operational efficiency.
BCS General Manager Service & Solutions Marc Michel says the contract is a great win for BCS and for New Zealand. “Clearly our SYM3 3D simulation/control software played a significant role in getting us noticed over larger international competitors.”
Michel said the win was also excellent vindication of the support and partnership BCS has with the Ministry of Business Innovation & Employment (MBIE).
“They played a significant role in partnering with us to develop and commercialise the SYM3 product over the last six years, which formed a significant part of our strategy that has seen BCS transition into another $ 100m+ Kiwi company.
