Brunswick Golden Isles Airport Runway Project Advances

Nov. 15, 2013
Work began in late October and will be complete within six months

Nov. 15--Background: After noticing a number of flaws in the runway at Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, officials with the Glynn County Airport Commission in 2006 began planning a rehabilitation project.

Last year, the commission received word it had received a multimillion-dollar grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to tear out the runway, which had been in place since the 1940s.

Considering the ways to accomplish the project, the airport commission opted to close the airport at night and conduct the work then to prevent it from having to close the airport completely, including during the day.

Work began in late October, and each night, 80 to 90 workers with Seaboard Construction cover the runway for 11 hours, making repairs one section at a time.

Work is expected to last five to six months, after which work on the airport's taxiway will begin.

What's new: The work to excavate and replace the runway is on schedule, officials said Wednesday, and proposed changes to the project should save money.

The airport commission's operations committee Wednesday recommended a change that allows for $22,000 in savings by switching the base of the new runway from limestone to granite.

Representatives of Seaboard Construction, the contractor on the project, reported that not only is the crushed aggregate granite base cheaper, but it's more quickly obtained, ensuring that the project stays on track for an early 2014 completion.

The base change was part of a much larger change order that encompassed additional work required to move 16 steel beams from the structure of the old runway. The beams caused considerable damage to milling equipment when discovered last month.

The material switch will offset the cost of the work to remove the steel, a $12,000-effort, according to the change order approved by the committee Wednesday.

"(The contractor) had to go in with ground-penetrating radar to locate the (steel)," said Brian Thompson, senior aviation manager of RS&H, the consulting firm overseeing the project. "We still don't know what they were for. But the contractor is solving problems as he encounters them. There's always adjustments when you're doing construction underground."

He said the rehabilitation project remains on track to be completed by the end of winter, in late February or early March 2014.

When the runway is finished, Seaboard Construction will go on to improve the airport's taxiway using additional grant funds received from the Federal Aviation Administration. Total completion is expected in April 2014.

-- Kelly Quimby

Copyright 2013 - The Brunswick News, Ga.