marchapril2021 - 32

RUNWAY PROJECTS
AUTHOR Timothy Audet

RECONSTRUCTING ONE OF NEW ENGLAND'S

Longest Commercial Service

IN THE Fall of 2019, the Pease Development
Authority (PDA) undertook a $24 million runway
reconstruction project at the Portsmouth
International Airport at Pease. This began a sevenmonth process whereby the runway and portions
of the connecting taxiways were reconstructed
utilizing 104,500 tons of new bituminous asphalt
placed in a 2.7 million square foot area. This was
accomplished while maintaining an open and
accessible runway and airport except for one
14-day closure period.
To understand the magnitude of this
challenge, it is helpful to rewind seven
years to 2014 when the PDA first started
programming and planning this project.
There were known project challenges
and objectives in 2014 ranging from
the funding source, to incorporating
sustainability and innovation in the
design, to designing meticulous
sequencing that would keep this 11,322foot runway open to commercial airline,
general aviation, cargo and military air
traffic during construction. Working
with four different funding agencies and
within two distinctly different design
criteria, FAA and military, many best

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TIMOTHY AUDET, PE, Senior Airport Engineer
Tim has nearly 20 years of broad engineering experience on
airport improvement projects including pavement, drainage,
grading and electrical layout design, stormwater permit
applications and utility infrastructure design. Tim's extensive
field experience enables him to follow each project from
design concept to construction completion. For the Runway
16-34 project, Tim served as the Construction Administrator
responsible for providing the PDA with effective management
of the project's schedule, cost, quality, safety, and project
document compliance.

practices were established during the
project.
The design team from Hoyle, Tanner
& Associates Inc. and four supporting
specialty consultants provided early
economic and cost alternatives analysis,
planning, design, permitting, bidding
and construction support services. The
location and scale of this project also
presented an ideal opportunity for
the design team to share their passion
for airport engineering with the next
generation of designers. Hoyle, Tanner
partnered with the University of New
Hampshire (UNH) Senior Capstone
Program, working with five students
within the Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department throughout
the design of the project.
In 2014, the FAA, New Hampshire
Depar t ment of Transpor t at ion
(NHDOT), and PDA knew that by
2018 this single runway airport would
have pavement that had exceeded its
20-year pavement life and show its age,
and the programming for this project
was within the FAA five-year window
of Capital Improvement Programming

32 \ AIRPORTBUSINESS / MARCH/APRIL 2021

planning. What was not clear was how
much of the project would be funded by
FAA and NHDOT, versus the funding
contribution from another stakeholder,
the New Hampshire Air National
Guard (NHANG).
To begin to address this in a manner
that each federal agency would accept, a
series of cost estimates were developed
with scenario-based alternatives. In
2015, a Runway Length Analysis was
undertaken that sought to identify
what length of runway the FAA
would support for reconstruction, thus
revealing what length of runway the
NHANG would be asked to fund. This
was a key question that is not considered
at a civilian use only airport.
Because the runway supports both
military and civilian operations and
the length required for the NHANG
was established as 10,000 feet, the FAA
was not able to match that runway
length requirement. In fact, the FAA
has a statutory requirement to focus on
the civil use only for runway length
determination.
The analysis yielded three very
different runway length options:
maintain the existing 11,322 feet,
shorten to NHANG's required 10,000
feet, or further reduce to FAA's approved

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