Helicopter logistics for multi-site infrastructure projects

Infrastructure programmes fail on logistics long before they fail on engineering. Sites are dispersed, access roads are unfinished, and one specialist team is needed at three places in the same week.

Every day of slippage carries cost that is already contracted: plant on hire, subcontractors mobilised, penalty clauses, commissioning windows agreed with a client or a grid operator.

• Sites are dispersed and the road network forces a whole day of travel between them.
• Access roads are unbuilt, seasonal or impassable for part of the programme.
• Specialist crews or tooling must reach several points inside one shift.
• Equipment must be placed where no crane can be set up, or where crane mobilisation costs more than the lift.
• A milestone is fixed by a client, an outage or a grid connection and slippage is expensive.

• A site list with coordinates, and the landing status of each point: approved pad, prepared area, unprepared ground, or hoist-only.
• Who controls each site, and whether written acceptance for helicopter operations exists.
• Total people and equipment to move, broken down per rotation, with real weights.
• Ground time required at each site, separate from flight time.
• The programme window, the fixed milestones inside it, and which dates cannot move.
• Whether the requirement is recurring across weeks or months — this is usually structured as a campaign, not as separate charters.

• Payload is the binding constraint on almost every project mission; dimensions matter as much as weight.
• Each additional landing point adds approval work, and one unapproved site can push a one-day plan into two.
• Fuel availability shapes the routing: long multi-site days often need a planned refuelling stop.
• Weather contingency belongs in the programme from the start, together with a fallback order of sites.
• External loads and unprepared ground require specific operator approvals and, sometimes, a site survey.

• Site list with coordinates and landing status.
• Controlling party per site and acceptance status.
• People and equipment per rotation, with real weights.
• Ground time needed at each site.
• Fixed milestones and immovable dates.
• Fuel and refuelling assumptions.
• Weather contingency and fallback site order.

• Remote project helicopter charter
• Remote site logistics
• Industrial downtime response