This project was not a traditionally designed project. Although a consultant assisted with determining rehabilitation boundaries and evaluating rehabilitation strategies, The Harper Company was brought in early in the process to determine construction strategies and typical design details. Since any reduction in operations would have a ripple effect of operations, work occurred during weekend closures that were determined by the operations schedule. Most of the owner’s flights occur overnight, and most of those are on weekday nights. The construction window agreed upon was from 7:00 am Saturday through 10:00 pm Monday. This provided a 63 hour construction weekend each weekend without disruption to flight operations.

Reconstruction was performed with transverse paving strips using a pavement section based on the existing pavement structure. Reconstruction started with replacing one transverse row of slabs per closure, but progressed to four lanes per closure by the end of construction. To address roughness concerns with paving in transverse direction, diamond grinding and the grooving were performed to provide the final runway surface.

The Harper Company developed a new pavement design that included placing 22 inches of PCC over 8 inches of P209 crushed stone sub base to compensate for the absence of a stabilized base. One of the keys to success of this project was developing a mix with fairly rigorous strength requirements that would also be workable. The Harper Company had developed several mix designs in its ASTM C 1077 lab in planning for this project. The final mix design used to achieve 650 psi at 24 hours had 800 pounds of Type I cement per yard. In most cases, the strength requirement was met a day early, providing a considerable margin of safety.