ForConstructionPros.com

John Wayne Airport (JWA), a prominent Los Angeles regional facility that is tightly surrounded by high density commercial and residential areas, recently completed reconstruction of its primary runway. Kimley Horn & Associates Inc. provided project administration and engineering while Butier Engineering, Inc. provided construction management. All American Asphalt Inc. provided construction supervision, materials, labor and equipment to build the project

Primary work included coring the top three inches of aged pavement on the 5,700-foot main runway then repaving the area with a PG 76-10 overlay. Included in the specification was the requirement for protecting 68,000 square yards of runway shoulder and aprons with a protective coating which was:

• Waterborne
• Environmentally clean (no VOCs, no HAPs, no toxins or carcinogens, and no Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons)
• Fuel resistant
• "Skid neutral" or better
• Insoluble to rain within one hour of curing
• Able to cure at night, at 50 degrees F, in less than six hours.

Those requirements set standards that only new innovation could solve.

Due to its neighborhood proximity, the airport is regularly closed between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. This presented the challenge of developing and installing a coating that could be placed and would achieve full cure within this time window so heavy jet traffic could resume operations.

Since the contract penalty for interrupting normal JWA activities was $10,000 per minute, the decision process for selecting a coating which met all the requirements, especially those of the curing window was, to say the least, characterized by heightened drama.