Busy Base Enlists Help From Riggotts

Located to the west of London, RAF Northolt operates like clockwork. Home to a number of Royal Air Force units, the base also handles a high volume of private civilian flights. In addition road vehicles frequently have to negotiate areas where aircraft taxi and take-off.

In other words, people really need to know where they are going. Or else… That in mind, a team from Riggotts recently spent some time at RAF Northolt painting and marking various areas to help ensure that the base runs smoothly. The work included painting ‘stop bars’ on taxiways aimed at bringing road vehicles sharing tarmacked areas with aircraft to a halt when a plane is preparing to either take off or land.

Motorcycle parking bays were also painted and marked, as was a pedestrian walkway down the middle of a disused runway now used as a car park.

“They’d had problems with people parking anywhere which meant there was nowhere for people to actually walk safely through the car park,” said Chris Lee, a member of the Riggotts’ team which completed the work.

“RAF Northolt is a busy place so we needed to work around everything else that was going on without creating any inconvenience. We were able to do that and, as a result of our work, hopefully, the base will be able to operate that little bit smoother in future.”