Flying for all

Only when the last plane has landed at Zurich Airport at around 11 p.m. do the construction workers make their meticulously coordinated appearance. And when the first plane takes off right here the next morning, all these men and women have disappeared again like the brownies. What has happened in the meantime on runway 10-28 at Zurich Airport:

For 80 fall and winter nights in 2022/23, ARGE Midnightforce, in which Implenia was involved, renovated Zurich Airport's west runway 10-28. Little did the Implenia team know that they were following in the footsteps of their predecessors. Because runway 10-28 is the oldest of the three runways at Zurich-Kloten Airport, which opened in 1948. And who built it? Heinr. Hatt-Haller AG and SA Conrad Zschokke from Geneva.

It was not the first runway that Implenia renovated as part of a consortium. In fact, the renovation of runway 10-28 was the conclusion of a comprehensive runway renovation: in 2008, Implenia renovated runway 16-34 as part of the Midnightrun consortium, and in 2014, runway 14-32 as part of the Midnightspeed consortium.

However, the pioneer of civil aviation in Switzerland was not Zurich, but Geneva, which was much more "international" at the time. Geneva had had an airfield in the suburb of Cointrin with a license for commercial air traffic since 1922. In 1938, the canton of Geneva acquired further land around the airport in order to expand it. Three years later, construction work began - despite the war economy and rationed cement supplies. At the forefront: SA Conrad Zschokke, which extended the runway to 2000 m from 1941 and built the first large hangar at Geneva-Cointrin Airport in 1946 with its experience in metal construction.

It is this experience in airport construction that SA Conrad Zschokke later brings to the construction of Zurich Airport, where Hatt-Haller is clearly the "top dog". Nevertheless, when construction work began on the airport in Zurich, intercontinental flights were already operating in Geneva: Trans World Airlines (TWA), and not Swissair, had been operating the New York-Geneva-Rome-Cairo route here since April 8, 1946.

Implenia combines this expertise from its predecessor companies. Whether in building construction or civil engineering, Switzerland's largest construction and real estate service provider knows its way around airports. As with runway construction, the short time frames and complicated logistics are a constant challenge. Deliveries, the use of heavy equipment and lifting gear - all this is only possible outside of operating hours, i.e. at night. However, Implenia feels at ease under such conditions, so that in 2025, for example, the new Rächtenwisen freight hall can be opened - a sustainable, modern timber construction, just like the first buildings by Zschokke and Hatt-Haller.

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Main photo: Workers of Ad. Schäfer+Cie AG during formwork work at Zurich Airport, 1970. Eight years later, the long-established Aarau-based company becomes part of the Zschokke Group. Ad. Schäfer+Cie AG, Aarau 1870-1970