Airport News, "Better Ways to Building Better Airports"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@cwnet.com>]

September 20, 1999

Better Ways to Building Better Airports
ENR: Engineering News-Record - The Construction Weekly
McGraw-Hill


New ideas and methods keep pace with changing face of U.S. airports

They won't make them like they used to. U. S. airports, facing the
relentless growth of passengers and cargo, clogged arteries and hubs, and
too few investment dollars are finding that necessity is indeed the mother
of invention. The push for more efficient ways to design, build, fund and
manage new airport facilities is translating into new technology and
business approaches. Privatization, intermodalism and alliances are the
buzzwords of aviation construction as participants envision bigger planes,
more user-friendly airports and computerized operations.

A new generation of long-distance airplanes that can carry 1,000 passengers
will have more wheels to spread out the impact--but more points of impact on
the pavement, notes Michael Della Rocca, chairman and CEO of Raytheon
Infrastructure Inc., Princeton, N.J. ``There is a lot of research under
way'' to deal with the impact on runways, taxiways, underground structures
and runway bridges by developing quicker-setting pavement and precast panels
that can be constructed off site, placed swiftly and last longer.

Precast panels, only just starting to be used, ``are definitely a viable
technology,'' says John Storms, a Raytheon principal and member of the
American Society of Civil Engineers' air transport pavement committee. He
adds that ``some pavements will set in an hour'' but are expensive and not
as durable as standard pavements that are meant to last the 20 years
recommended by Federal Aviation Administration standards. But in the midst
of ongoing airport activity, ``anything that can be done to expedite
placement will be an advantage,'' points out Della Rocca.

DOWN THE RUNWAY Improving runways will be the challenge for just about every
U.S. airport. ``The logistics of executing the work are becoming very
complicated,'' says Jim Goetz, Parsons Brinckerhoff program manager for the
$1-billion airport expansion program in San Jose, Calif. An existing runway
at the site will be lengthened from some 5,000 ft to 11,000 ft. Goetz is
considering using a profile-a-graph, a piece of equipment that runs over the
pavement and picks up surface irregularities, similar to pavement testing on
highways.

John Jacobsen, regional manager for PB's aviation group, says that some new
planes will have an average take-off weight of 632,500 lb. Runways at major
airports throughout the country are being strengthened and deepened,
typically to as deep as 3 or 4 ft, says Goetz. Raytheon's Storms adds that a
new approach to extending runway life is to increase the subbase by a few
feet before topping it with asphalt or concrete. This can increase overall
lifespan from 20 to 40 years, he says.

Superpave asphalt, with specified modifers tested by a ``gyratory
compactor'' to simulate aircraft impact, is being tested by federal highway
researchers in a program that could carry over to runways, says Scott
Murrell, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's assistant chief
civil engineer. The FAA's own pavement testing facility opened this year in
Egg Harbor Township, N.J., and houses a 1.1-million-lb test vehicle on a
quarter-mile track with various sections imbedded with sensors.

The port authority is also testing the use of $2.5-million arrestor beds,
blocks of special low-density, epoxy-coated cement that are meant to protect
nearby road traffic from out-of-control planes. The bed allows a DC-10
moving at 40 mph to stop in just 200 ft by crumbling beneath the plane's
wheels. Spurred by a 1984 accident at New York City's John F. Kennedy
International Airport, the technology was developed through the FAA and the
port authority, says port authority spokesman William Cahill. While the
arrestors are working well at JFK, they have been removed temporarily at New
York's LaGuardia Airport until engineers can determine why cement chunks
have been churned up by large jets.

PAPERLESS Computer-simulated landings and takeoffs, three-dimensional
airport designs, electronically monitored costs and information technology
are increasingly helping to smooth both construction and operations at
airports, says Joseph Bellanca, executive vice president of Bovis
Construction Corp., Atlanta. Some examples are being created in Europe. An
IT system just installed in Brussels monitors incoming flights from 20 miles
out, allowing ground crews to mobilize early, helping to increase the
turnaround of international flights from three to six per day, he notes.

Greg Albjerg, vice president for HNTB Aviation, Kansas City, Mo., adds that
consultants are using project Websites to exchange design drawings and tools
to simulate delays from traffic, weather and other parameters. Also ``we're
looking toward global positioning systems to replace some of the systems we
use now,'' says Michael Hurst, president and CEO of St. Louis-based
McCarthy, which recently completed a $28.7-million project at Sacramento's
city's airport. He adds that fiber-optic cables are being installed on
airfields at major airports. Even so, ``The one inefficient operation out
there with no good solution yet is the handling of baggage,'' says Hurst.

ALLIANCES High-technology items need large amounts of financing, and much of
that funding cannot be used if Congress doesn't take airport and airway
trust funds off budget, says Bellanca. While the industry waits to see what
happens with AIR-21 legislation, it continues to use innovative new methods
of financing and building of its infrastructure. ``As finances become more
difficult to find...airport owners will rely more and more on
privatization,'' Bellanca says.

``If you look 10 to 15 years ago and back, you find that all airport
construction and development was a function of airport funds or airline
usage funds,'' says Dave Garrett, president of Airis Corp., Atlanta.
``Long-term obligations [leases] were the order of the day.'' But with
deregulation and profit pressures, the advent of third-parties to provide
new sources of capital, development and services has been swift, he says.
Airis will design, build, own and manage an 18-acre, $100-million cargo
complex at JFK that recently broke ground. A similar 300,000-sq-ft complex
was just completed at Newark International Airport, the Newark, N.J.,
facility also owned by the N.Y.-N.J. port authority. Outsourcing for airport
construction will continue to grow because ``the private sector can provide
capital and assume market risks,'' Garrett notes.

U.S. airports also are hiring program managers to manage and coordinate
construction, says Della Rocca. ``Most owners have in-house engineers and
support teams, but so many airports are under expansion that it's uncommon
to find them doing it all in-house,'' he says. Using a private firm to serve
as a contact point and coordinator ``is happening a lot more often,'' he
notes. That's the case at airports in St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago and
Minneapolis-St. Paul.

The airports and airlines also are learning to form closer alliances.
Continental Airlines, which plans a $1-billion terminal expansion at Newark,
is acting as its own contractor and working on designs with the port
authority, says Paul Wood, the agency's program director for airport
redevelopment.

Peer review boards are also improving airport construction techniques and
communication. Every few months, airport officials and program managers meet
at a hosting airport to discuss trends on major projects, says William Fife,
director of aviation services for Frederic R. Harris, Inc., New York City,
who created the concept 10 years ago. ``We can't afford not to improve the
communication process between groups involved in similar work,'' he says.

Multimodalism is a big topic for U.S. airports, and it goes even beyond
light-rail connections. ``You will see a big push at most major airports to
integrate modes of transportation on both passenger and cargo levels,'' says
Franco Eleutera, corporate vice president of McClier, Chicago. He cites
projects in Fort Worth, Washington state and Miami as examples of those that
include rail lines and even ship docks as part of airport infrastructure.
``What a contractor must now do is address all modes of transport at an
airport,'' he notes.

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