- Company: Interwest Construction
- Industry: Transportation
- Location: Mukilteo, Washington
- Expected Completion Date: 10/27/15
This project reconfigured existing taxiways at Paine Field Airport to make it easier for pilots to understand which path to follow to get to the runway and reduce chances that they might get confused.
What impact does this project have on America?
Paine Field is a busy airport with a high volume of both private and commercial flights. It is a manufacturing hub for Boeing. The chance that a pilot could become confused and inadvertently maneuver their plane into a live runway puts lives of pilots and passengers at risk, and could delay flights and cost time and money.
What interesting obstacles or unusual circumstances did you overcome to complete the project?
We re-sequenced the multi stage construction(involved 7 difference stages) to accommodate a 6 week delay of critical material deliveries and still maintained project milestones including a weekend closure of the main runway and final project completion milestones.
What dangers and risks did you encounter, and describe any extraordinary methods used to keep workers safe?
Working inside a live airport is extremely dangerous. The chance for people or equipment to end up in live taxiway or runway zones could result in a collision with live aircraft. Our crews teamed with airport operations staff to provide pre-construction training for all onsite construction personnel and provide daily briefings to assure that any changes to the limits of safe work zones were clearly understood by both construction personnel and pilots using the taxiways and runways that were directly adjacent to our work areas.
How did you leverage new technologies to work faster and reduce waste?
We utilized robotic total stations to provide three dimensional automatic grade control on grading equipment including a motor grader and a dozer as well as the asphalt milling machine and the asphalt paving machine. Use of these automatic grade controls allowed us to meet strict FAA specifications for final grade and smoothness tolerances.
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