WWW.ACPA.ORG 13 Winter // 2022–23 MILITARY AIRPORTS Repair Taxiway Bravo Ramp (WAK008) and Repair Hot Cargo Pad (WAK006) Wake Island CONTRACTOR: Southwest Concrete Paving Company* OWNER: 772nd ESS/PKA ENGINEER: AECOM* SILVER Runway 05-23 Pavement & Airfield Lighting Rehabilitation Pope AAF, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina CONTRACTOR: R.C. Construction Co.* and Millstone Weber* Joint Venture OWNER: USACE, Savannah District ENGINEER: HDR* and Crawford, Murphy & Tilly* Joint Venture Southwest Concrete Paving (SWCP) served as a key subcontractor for the Repair Hot Cargo Pad and Repair Bravo Taxiway project. The U.S. Air Force maintains an active base on Wake Island, a tiny atoll island located approximately 2,500 miles west of Hawaii. The base encompasses the entire island, with access to the island restricted to those actively stationed on base or federal contractors working on active projects. Travel to the project location itself was a long and cumbersome journey that required a four to five hour chartered flight from Honolulu to the island that was only available once every two weeks. These flights brought in a limited number of supplies along with a fresh crew while another crew departed off the island to return home for a short break. The airfield consists of a 10,000-foot-long runway and adjacent taxiways. The project involved replacing the existing asphalt on both Taxiway Band and the Hot Cargo Pad with heavy-duty airfield portland cement concrete pavement. Due to the extreme remoteness of the project, SWCP carefully planned every aspect of the project to ensure it was a success. Most of the project materials needed to be barged in from the mainland United States, including all aggregates and required material for construction, temporary housing, batching equipment, and a water filtration system for construction water and the batch plant. SWCP was highly cautious with the quantities, not exceeding the allocated materials and not bringing excess material due to the remote location and subsequent costs. SWCP mobilized a low-profile batch plant to set up on the island. The low pro-plant was selected because of its self-erect capability, which did not require a crane for erection. Despite this option, SWCP chose to fabricate and install a 4-foot riser on the plant requiring a small on-island crane to set the drum. All cementitious materials were mobilized to the site in one phase. These products were transported in super sacks, and the entire project was paved using sack unloaders to transfer cementitious material from the super sacks to on-site storage guppies. A joint venture consisting of ACPA member companies R.C. Construction Co., Inc. and Millstone Weber, LLC completed Runway 05-23 Pavement and Airfield Lighting Rehabilitation, a design-bid-build project located at Pope Army Airfield, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Total pavement section replacement included excavation of approximately 80,000 cubic yards of material, subgrade preparation including slurry cement stabilization of 274,000 square yards, placement of 40,000 tons of recycled concrete base course for new shoulder pavement, 207,000 square yards of new cement stabilized drainage layer, and 201,000 square yards of new portland cement concrete (PCC) pavement ranging from 15 to 17 inches. As this runway is a strategic power projection platform for Defense Operations from the United States East Coast, the timeline for the runway reconstruction portion of the contract was limited to a total of 120 days. The runway was opened for full instrument flight rules (IFR) flight operations 50 days ahead of schedule. The runway was closed for construction on June 15, 2021, and officially reopened for aircraft on October 13, 2021, a total runway reconstruction period of exactly 120 days, which included grooving and installation of full IFR pavement markings. GOLD
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