Ensuring air safety from the ground up at RAF Leeming

At RAF Leeming is based in North Yorkshire and is home to 100 Squadron. The base exists to train, deliver and support the UK air operations.

When nesting, birds will collect all sorts of debris and bird droppings can collect in significant quantities if bird control measures or deterrents are not installed. The bird’s presence was a serious risk to the air safety of the squadron as well the dropping being a health and safety risk.

Project overview

Air safety is paramount at RAF Leeming but was threatened by the ingress of nuisance crows and pigeons into base hangars. Gaining access through open hangar doors the birds were nesting and roosting above the critical maintenance activity on the RAF aircraft.

Our solution

The initial solution was to bird proof the roof joists using bird netting. This could be installed to allow maintenance but prevent the birds from roosting or nesting above aircraft being maintained below.

The risk assessment, however, identified that due to the overhead heating units netting could not be used due the fire risk. Another solution was required and our teams frequently use weldmesh to effectively bird proof solar panels to prevent birds access for roosting or nesting.

Securing agreement with the RAF health and safety representative our team settled on weldmesh as the most effective and fire safe bird proofing solution. This was no small undertaking like solar panels, the hangers were 45 metres x 90 metres so significantly more weldmesh was required than usual!

Using cable, the weldmesh was securely installed with ‘tunnels’ created around the heating lamps in the roof space. This bird proofing solution proved to be so effective that 3 other hangers were also protected in the same way removing the risk to air safety.

Bird proofing solutions