When the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority chose the name Project Journey for its $1-billion capital improvement program at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that began in 2017, few could have imagined how prescient that choice would be.

The destination was clear—a new 225,000-sq-ft, 14-gate concourse to house American Airlines’ regional service, and two 50,000-sq-ft security checkpoints to replace three space-constrained screening locations to improve passenger movement in the main terminal.

The project team understood at the outset the inherent challenges of carrying out construction within the confines of a busy airport. But last year’s emergence of a global pandemic added multiple dimensions of uncertainty, challenging the team to find ways to ensure operational efficiency.

Midway through 2021, the concourse is already in operation, having staged a “soft opening” three months ahead of schedule. The checkpoints are on pace to be completed this fall.

到2020年3月的乘客数量从2020年3月的100万幅度略高于100万。它仍然低于流行前的水平，但稳定地攀升，截至今年3月，它达到了299,000。

Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority construction program manager Ryan Wolfgang says that achieving those milestones amid so many figurative headwinds and unexpected issues is a credit to collaboration among his agency, the joint venture design team of PGAL and AECOM and lead contractor Turner Construction.

Wolfgang notes that Turner’s construction manager at-risk contract “allowed us to issue preconstruction task orders as the project progressed and phase terminal work to minimize potential disruptive effects to airside operations.”

That was particularly true for the three-level concourse, which is to replace the airport’s notorious Gate 35X—essentially a bus stop for shuttles that transported passengers to and from 14 outdoor tarmac gates, or hardstands.

Preserving this multimodal shuttle activity throughout construction involved scheduling the initial step of compressing the site’s decades-old fill with more than 41,000 cu yd of surcharge. The two-phase process spanned a 102,500-sq-ft area that included portions of the airside apron.

Because excessive settlement in portions of the initial phase threatened to delay concourse foundation work, the project team quickly revised the surcharge plan by also creating a 10-ft-high, 26,000-sq-ft berm to facilitate construction crane staging.

“That helped us advance work on the concourse while also providing sufficient time to mitigate all the geotechnical issues,” explains Shimelis Meskellie, authority manager for that phase of the project.

为了容纳一个饱和的子级，包括散落的粘土口袋，该终端的粉底包括440 12平方米。驱动的预制桩和239个18英寸Dia累积了铸件，与130个桩帽和互连级梁有关。机构大厅项目经理Priyam S. Shah表示，必须仔细编排和监视每个堆的确切位置，因为它被驱动到完整的深度。沙阿说：“这对承包商来说是一个巨大的挑战。”

One of the biggest obstacles in the concourse’s path was the most immovable—an existing 4,200-sq-ft electrical substation with an exterior transformer yard that served the airport’s two primary terminals.

PGAL project manager Dennis Comiskey explains that because no concourse configuration could fully bypass the obstruction without reducing the number of gates, “we essentially built through the substation by incorporating it into the footprint.”

从施工的角度来看，该计划是可行的，但项目团队必须确保变电站保持全面运行，同时拆除结构的上10英尺以与大厅的地板板保持一致。Comiskey说，该解决方案是制定一种结构性的框架策略，“封装变电站并提供足够的间隙，而不会产生不可能的情况来建立周围的大厅。”

特纳用重型塑料床单和木制框架将变电站包裹起来，在整个内部添加了一个临时的防水平台，在拆除原始墙壁和屋顶截面时保护了电气设备。单独的内部围墙和脚手架系统保护了单个开关设备，因为龙门起重机在顶部放置了64英尺长的地板梁。一系列调理单元在开关设备周围保持正压，从而最大程度地减少了湿度引起的电弧闪光的潜力。

The substation itself can be accessed from outside for maintenance. The concourse interior above the encapsulated facility is used as back-of-house space for concessionaires.

Paul Angelini, Turner general superintendent, says the extensive planning paid off in a “pretty seamless” process that required only a few weeks to complete. “We worked around a living, breathing substation, with no incidents or safety issues,” he says.

Coping with COVID-19

While extensive planning was crucial in executing Project Journey’s initial years of construction, adaptability proved to be the watchword for 2020 as the pandemic upended jobsite practices and the air travel patterns that the facilities were built to support.

With flight cutbacks reducing the number of Gate 35X hardstands, the project team saw that it could accelerate installation of a 1,020-ft-long extension of an underground hydrant system used to fuel aircraft. That cut the originally planned year-long task by nearly half.

The pandemic-driven cutback in airline traffic also altered Turner’s approach to the two new security checkpoint buildings. They will expand screening capacity, alleviate congestion and provide flexibility for implementing future security technology and protocols.

Wedged between the airport’s Metrorail station and above existing terminal roads and pedestrian bridges, the buildings are founded on a total of 247 augered cast piles plus additional support columns installed on the existing arrivals levels. The resulting “floating” structural system provides clearance for emergency vehicles and isolates the new checkpoints from existing infrastructure foundations.

Constructing the building over existing terminal access roads brought the added consideration of safeguarding passengers. Jeff Klinger, Turner vice president and construction executive, says those people were “essentially walking through a construction site.” Dust walls and other measures could isolate pedestrians from adjacent building activity, but maintaining vehicle traffic beneath the checkpoints further complicated both safety and scheduling.

克林格补充说：“与其他项目不18luck官网同，如果交易无法在某个地区工作，那么您就不能让它们在另一个高程或外部工作。”

因此，大多数检查站的施工活动最初都是在晚上进行的。与终端加油系统一样，乘客大流行驱动的下降允许将更多的工作转移到白天。尽管此举允许特纳几乎将其现场劳动力三倍，但现场更多的人意味着更大的潜在接触Covid-19。

“这是一个教训的小心what you wish for,’” says Vito Perrotta, Turner construction executive. Along with implementing a variety of safety measures to prevent virus spread without compromising worker productivity, Perrotta says a forced shift to online video meetings provided an unexpected boost to the project-wide communication.

“Before, we would just send emails,” he recalls. The improved coordination from having everyone together for a video “was pretty powerful.”

与大流行有关的材料供应连锁店的干扰还迫使特纳在可能的情况下放弃及时的交货，以累积组件，将它们分成仓库和机场现场的任何可用开放空间。

Of particular concern was steel coming from a fabricator in Canada for the buildings’ distinctive curved roofs. Turner learned early in the pandemic that the border with Canada might soon be closed and worked with the fabricator to accelerate shipments to a storage yard in southern Virginia.

“I think the last load got out just in time,” Perrotta says with a laugh.

In recent months, contractors have fitted each building with 580 panels of electrochromic glass to compensate for changing daylight conditions. The structures are topped with a continuous curved roofline that echoes the Cesar Pelli-designed Terminal B/C, built during the airport’s last major facilities upgrade in 1997.

随着团队应用室内装饰并在太空装修方面，新闻发布会的项目旅程即将结束。沃尔夫森说，这种经验为弹性和适应性提供了宝贵的课程。他说：“借助Covid，第一阶的业务当然是为了确保员工安全，尤其是随着它的成长而安全。”

沃尔夫森补充说，尽管一些工人确实在该项目的过程中测试了积极的态度，但“从来没有这样的情况下我们失去了整个船员。最后，我们能够在不关闭项目的情况下进行工作。”