Heathrow T5 report slams staff training

The T5 opening debacle was down to a lack of staff training after the £4.3bn project had been completed by Laing O’Rourke “on time and on budget”.

Construction work emerged relatively unscathed in a damning House of Commons Transport Select Committee which described the terminal’s opening as a “national embarrassment”.

More than 23,000 bags were lost during T5’s opening period as the building descended into chaos.

The report said: “Problems were experienced with the baggage system, car parking, security searches and aspects of the building itself.

“Most of these problems were caused by one of two main factors: insufficient communication between owner and operator, and poor staff training and system testing.”

The MPs were told by BA baggage handlers that training was totally inadequate.

One told the committee: “People were taken to a hotel and shown some sort of film or slides and told this was what it looked like. They were then given familiarisation training for three days to cover an area as big as Hyde Park. That was not sufficient at all. For that reason people were totally confused.

“Two days out of the three were devoted to putting them into a coach to show them x, y and z, and where to enter and exit and so on, but what was missing was hands on training as to where the spurs were, where the bags would come in and so on.

“For baggage in particular it was still a building site. You could not start to train people there unless you had on a hard hat and all the rest of it. Therefore, the only time available to show these people around was the very last few weeks.”