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When the Durango-La Plata County Airport decided to go ahead with a plan to improve its one runway, business owners and community members had some concerns. The Durango-La Plata County Airport is the gateway to a flourishing tourist economy around southwestern Colorado's San Juan Mountains. Durango-La Plata is also the only airport in the Four Corners region that is capable of handling the large U.S. Forest Service aircraft used to fight wildfires. With the airport runway down for an extended amount of time, nature, human life, and the economy of the Durango area would be threatened.

Nielsons Skanska Inc., a highway and heavy contractor out of Cortez, CO, took these challenges into consideration when planning this paving project and made a few changes to minimize economic and public impacts on the community. The quality of the end project led the National Asphalt Pavement Association to recognize Nielsons Skanska's unique job with a 2003 Quality in Construction Award. The Colorado Asphalt Pavement Association also awarded Nielsons Skanska with a 2003 Best Overall Quality award in the airport division for the Durango-La Plata County Airport job.

The original job contract called for the paving operations on the 9,600 foot-long runway to take place in three stages over two months — to pave one end of the runway, then the center, and then the other end. The runway would have been shut down for one month during phase two when the center section of the runway was being paved.

Nielsons Skanska worked with the airport to schedule the project in two stages, shortening the time airport operations would be affected. Phase one saw the paving of 1,800 feet of the south end of the runway, leaving the rest of the runway open for air traffic and only slightly impacted. During this first phase, the Nielsons Skanska crew fine tuned the paving process to help phase two, when the rest of the runway was to be paved, go as smoothly as possible. The company also worked to gain Federal Aviation Administration approval for the landing of forest service, commercial, and light aircraft on the Durango-La Plata County Airport taxiway, which also helped to minimize community impacts. Nielsons Skanska crews worked 14- and 15-hour single shifts, double shifts, and weekends to finish the paving early and a quarter of a million dollars under budget.

"Using the two-phase approach opened the runway for unrestricted use 11 days ahead of schedule," says Chris Eastin, vice president of Nielsons Skanska. "A significant achievement since the original three-phase plan had called for two months of paving work."