b'86 COSRUNWAYSColorado Springs AirportRehabs Key Runway in 90 Days BY SEAN OKEEFETeamwork set the tone for the award-winning rehabilitationAeronautics. State personnel use the Pavement Condition Index of Runway 17R-35L at Colorado Springs Airport(PCI), a numeric scale developed by the U.S. Army Corps of completed last summer. And everyone on the team facedEngineers, to quantify the condition of runways and other key a formidable job: milling and overlaying the entire 11,022-footairfield surfaces. Using ASTM standardized survey methods, asphalt surface in just 90 days to avoid working during Coloradosinspectors look for visual indications of distress such as cracking, unpredictable fall and winter weather while minimizing impacts depressions, bumps and sags, joint reflections, weathering, etc. A to users. PCI score of 0 is the worst; 100 is the best. Right from the start, we took a teamThe state comes out every three years and surveys each runway approach to this tremendous task, sayswith a third-party engineer, says Miller. They walk each runway, Brett Miller, assistant director of Aviation -looking for cracking, spalling or other distressesand generate a Operations and Maintenance at COS. AsPCI rating for the pavement. When the degradation number gets soon as [prime contractor] Kiewit joined thebelow 60, its time to start thinking about repaving; 55 or below is team, we held a partnering meeting withconsidered a poor condition, which obviously cant go unresolved.RS&H [the engineering consultant] to get allBRETT MILLER Prior to the rehabilitation, 17R-35L was rated a 53. Its now a the players aligned around building this workperfect 100. within a very narrow and unforgiving construction window.Miller points out that every airports runways and infrastructure As the airports second-longest runway, 17R-35L serves aevolve as they are built, improved, repaired, replaced and significant portion of its annual enplanements, which reachedrehabilitated. The airfield at COS stretches back to 1927, when 936,000 last year. Like all commercial runways in Colorado,its two gravel runways were opened. By 1991, the three-runway it is monitored for deterioration by the Colorado Division of September 2022AirportImprovement.com'