A 24-ton capacity Kenworth haul truck delivers material to the Shuttle Buggy. Drivers hauled about 1,300 tons of mix per day in four trucks from the batch plant on site. All photos courtesy of Paving Consultant John Ball, Top Quality Paving, Manchester, N.H.
by Sandy Lender
T
The FAA spec allowed 3 to 5% air voids on the 76-22 binder mix.
22 APRIL/MAY 2010
he runway had its own deadline. The joints had their own density spec. The older plant had its own tonnage limitations. The stringline setup had its own no-crossing zone. It might sound as if the crew from Grace Pacific Corp., Kapolei, Hawaii, couldn’t catch a break on their rehabilitation of the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Barking Sands, in Kauai, Hawaii. As Manager Mike Lingaton pointed out, every job has its challenges. But every job has its highlights, too. For the PMRF project, crews were required to sawcut and cold mill the existing runway, taxiways and aprons to a 4-inch (100-mm) depth; repave with 4 inches of hot mix asphalt (HMA); and restripe the airfield, including runway threshold markings. Lingaton admitted the P401 mix posed some difficulty initially, but teamwork and attention to the details paid off for the crews overall. “Working with a different mix was a challenge,” Lingaton said. “We used a typical FAA mix. They specked out a 76-22 asphalt binder,
and we typically use a 64-16. It was a little stiffer, but it worked out fine. It took a little time to get the mix design right, but once we had it, we worked it just fine.” Grace Pacific crews weren’t alone on this project, and the opportunity to work with other entities turned out to be a highlight for Lingaton. The prime on the project was Bulltrack-Watts, a joint venture company out of Marysville, Calif. “We partnered with Bulltrack-Watts and we worked really well with them. Working with the Navy, the project went really smoothly.” One of the challenges Lingaton spoke of was milling, repaving and striping the runway under a three-month deadline. “The time crunch was the runway,” Lingaton said. “We needed to finish the runway work for special operations the Navy had scheduled.” For an asphalt operation like Grace Pacific, a three-month window should be no sweat. Paving Consultant John Ball, Manchester, N.H., participated in the work. They set up a detailed paving zone with Topcon sonic milling and