On the construction site of the new BBI, there's always hammering, banging and chiselling going on somewhere. This is a place where people really work – and hard, too. But even if a new piece of construction equipment does go into operation on site nearly every day, there are still some jobs that need to be done by hand.

Like the job the two strongmen I met yesterday were doing. Maik from Strausberg and Erwin from Tempelhof, both of them iron benders. “What's that you're making?” I asked them. “Reinforcement cages,” they replied.

Then I went a bit closer to get a proper look. Here they were, these two iron benders, just standing around bending metal rods of up to 30-millimetre diameter with their bare hands. Incredible! “Aren't there any machines for that?” I asked. “Not always,” said Erwin. And Maik nodded. “Aha.” OK.

A Herculean task, I thought to myself. Well, for an ant like me, anyway. Physical resilience is a must in this job because it's all about creating fixtures that can be built into the sheathing of walls and ceilings to stabilise them. Reinforcement cages, in fact – what else?

print version berlin-airport.de (Copyright Berliner Flughäfen)