b'68 MTN RUNWAYSwas often underwater. We would have outages very frequently, Fowler recalls. We were kind of just chasing ittrying to find where the issue was. It became unreliable, so that was becoming a safety issue.Repeated lighting failures were inconvenient for all tenants, but the outdated system also impeded night training for the Air National Guard because staff could not dim the runway lights to very low settings. That was a key aspect of their preparation they werent able to do, Fowler relates. This and other shortcomings were fixed when the entire airfield lighting system was updated with new fixtures, new cabling, an upgraded vault and a modernized control PHOTO: MARYLAND AVIATION ADMINISTRATION system. All runway and taxiway edge lights were replaced with LED fixtures, new conduit and base cans were installed and a network of junction cans was added in the infield to make maintenance safer and easier. Additionally, crews rebuilt the homerun cabling to the lighting vault, reconstructed the duct bank system and updated the airfield lighting control system with new hardware Installing duct banks before nightly runway closures began gave contractorsand software. Planning ahead, designers a head start on the project. included homerun duct banks and a parallel communication duct bank sized to support future needs of the FAA Air Traffic Control Tower. New signage was added throughout the airfield to reflect the new taxiway layout. Thanks to recent improvements, night training is now more realistic and rigorous for the Guard, and civilian pilots can depend on MTNs airfield lighting, too. Our lighting system was beginning to become an unreliable aspect of the runway, so having it completely replaced significantly upgraded our service capabilities and eliminated a maintenance headache, Fowler remarks. Innovative MeasuresEarly in the project, the engineering design team leveraged robust geotechnical investigation, including dynamic cone penetrometer testing, pavement cores and 13 standard penetration test borings. ThisJEFFREY KOLBinformed decisions on pavement rehabilitation strategies, such as avoiding crack-and-seat methods in favor of geosynthetic fabric overlays, explains Jeffrey Kolb, senior October 2025AirportImprovement.com'