Keeping Safe, and Operational

WASHINGTON, D.C. — At recent conferences, FAA associate administrator for airports D. Kirk Shaffer has been hitting hard on the need for diligence in preventing runway incursions, with an added emphasis on airports undergoing construction. He’s also retelling an incident that happened this year at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), in which improper procedures by a contractor led to an emergency evacuation of a ground tower at one of the world’s busiest airports. As it happens, AIRPORT BUSINESS was at IAD that day to get insights from Marty Clarke, senior deputy manager of ops and airport construction coordinator, whose team is responsible for maintaining safe and ongoing operations during IAD’s reconstruction.

10 a.m.
The story angle is managing a very active airfield in the midst of what is probably the largest airport reconstruction project currently happening in North America. I’m on time for the interview; Marty Clarke, director of operations and the person responsible for ensuring everybody is in synch, arrives at 10:05, panting. We’re headed to a meeting of one of the project teams. His role: sit in and see where coordination with other activities fits in, and then make sure it happens.

* * *

10:15 a.m.
Five minutes after our arrival at the meeting, Marty’s cell rings. A minute later he tells the group that the ramp tower is down; infrastructure work in the basement has created toxic fumes that have migrated through venting upward to the tower, affecting controllers. We’re off to the airfield, and the tower.

Arriving at the scene, police, maintenance, and airport rescue and firefighting personnel are already there. Controllers are being tended to. Tower activities were immediately transferred to the recently constructed ramp tower which immediately took over ground activities. Following NIMS — National Incident Management System — procedures [the airport had just run its disaster drill exercise the weekend before], ‘fire’ is in control, due to the toxic fumes.

Interestingly, the Dulles ramp control tower, abutting the main terminal, lies directly above the main corridor for passenger flow past security to the gates. Thus, to ventilate the tower, a duct opening in the middle of the traffic flow merely exacerbates the situation.

Over the next two hours, the tower would be ventilated; controllers cared to; and press reports made to local media. In the middle of it all, Marty Clarke is talking with police, ARFF, maintenance, his public relations people, and air traffic control — the goal is to keep everybody communicating and airline operations moving.

* * *

Noon
Two hours later the incident is over and the tower is again active. As we head out to airside, Marty turns to me and says, “I guess you just saw what I do — on an airfield that’s totally under construction.”

The challenge
Dulles International is in the midst of a $4 billion development program that includes an underground automated people mover, the Aero Train, which will connect its historic main terminal to four remote concourses, and a future fifth concourse. The airport is a year into constructing a fourth runway, 9,400x150 feet, and has the environmental done on a fifth.

It is a hub of airliner activity, and a hub of construction activity. The two don’t necessarily mesh. There are some 500 airport employees on the premises, estimates Clarke, with the number of construction workers varying by project. All the underground tunnels for Aero Train are dug, he points out, which has seen worker numbers drop, but the individual stations at the terminals are a long way from complete.

And there is the fourth runway. Says Clarke, “With the weather good, the numbers of people working on the fourth runway is way up. They probably have 300 people working out there; it had been about 100.” The fourth runway project, adjacent to current airline operations, is a big focus.