b'56 BOIPARKINGAt any airport, the challenge is to try to keep the airportdo need to have people who are experts in this to guide the running every single day during the process, says Stanley.process to keep the costs under control and make sure there are We figured out a phasing plan that made sense to minimizeno surprises, he advises. disruption and came up with three main phases of the project. As the project progressed, BOI knew the crowding would getEnvironmental Twistworse before it got better.A capped landfill on airport property presented the project team with an added challenge. BOI commissioned a soil report from I think the biggest challenge was that we had to take parkingenvironmental consulting firm Terracon to evaluate the risk for stalls out of our overall capacity, says Briggs. We were at avolatile organic compounds (VOCs) and help determine how to point where we were strained already and had to remove proceed. parking stalls. We put in a VIMS [vapor intrusion mitigation system] in case Martin Hahle, the architect of record fromsomething became a VOC that needed to be monitored, Singer CSHQA, was attuned to the challenge.says. We thought that was cheap insurance. We have all the People had become so accustomed topiping, so if and when the Idaho Department of Environmental readily finding a parking space in the past,Quality requests a courtesy monitoring report in five, 10, or 15 and they would be shocked when thereyears, we have the ability to do that monitoring.wasnt parking available, he explains. Theyd miss flights because they didntTerracon oversaw the testing and material removal while have time to park at a remote lot. Now,MARTIN HAHLE excavating 18 to 20 feet deep in the landfill area. the community is very excited and the newThey removed any waste material that would organically parking structure has restored the airport to a place where theybreak down over time and release gases, Hahle says. And we could count on having parking available.positioned the garage to have very little overlap with the landfill.On that note, Stanley emphasizes the importance of workingDocumenting and testing the soil around the landfill was with project partners that have experience in the airport sector.critical to define any unknowns, Stanley emphasizes. Engineers There are a lot of things happening at an airport, and you reallydetermined what kind of weight that patch of land could hold, and Walker consequently recommended a ground improvement process that compacts the soil to minimize settling after the structure is built. In addition, engineers chose rectangular 30 Years of footings, rather than drilled footings, to spread the weight evenly and impact smaller areas of the ground. Elevating the Airport Experience From there, Walker specified post-tension concrete structures, which use high-strength steel cables to allow concrete to span longer distances and remain highly durable, lowering the overall cost of ownership. Project designers selected precast concrete panels for the exterior barrier walls because theyre manufactured under controlled conditions with forms that create a smooth product with minimal imperfections. TakeawaysSinger says the team learned a great deal by working closely with the airports utility departments and securing their buy-in early on. We were coming out of post-pandemic workforce issues, and everyone was about two years behind, she recalls. We needed to work with utility contractors to relocate telephone cables, water lines, gas and more. Understanding timelines and working together were the biggest lessons learned. We can have the best schedule in the world, but if we dont have buy-in from the utility stakeholders, its just a chart with pretty colors. Team members agree that oversight and communication were also key factors. Differentiating between needs and wants helped the team distill the plan, and building in contingencies for things like permit costs provided valuable breathing room.Project leaders acknowledged the reality that mistakes happen, Singer explains. Having those contingencies built into the budget and creating an approval process to use those July | August 2024AirportImprovement.comAirport Improvement_July, August_CSHQA_FINAL.indd 1 5/31/2024 3:08:47 PM'