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AirportImprovement.com      October 2026
RUNWAYS 
VNY
help contractors accurately determine if the proposed work could 
be completed in the available windows. Behind the scenes, the 
team used four-week “look-ahead schedules,” moving to day-by-
day coordination during the 80-hour closures. That kept LAWA’s 
Project Management Team, the designers, contractor, Airport 
Operations and Communications team working from the same 
information.
The “FIFA factor” added extra rigidity to the project deadline. 
With Los Angeles hosting FIFA World Cup soccer matches in 
June and July 2026, VNY wanted the airport fully operational 
before the tournament. That pressure helped compress what 
had originally been a six-month construction schedule for Phase 
2 into about four months, Moreno notes. Fortunately, VNY was 
able to shift the start date to add necessary wiggle room to the 
schedule and provide a safer cushion ahead of the World Cup.
Each 80-hour clock also came with its own hard deadline on 
the back end. By Thursday morning, the runway had to be ready 
to reopen. Excavations had to be covered, the area graded and 
the runway safety area restored to compliance.
During the six closures, Sully-Miller worked around the clock. 
This meant undocumented conditions or urgent questions could 
arise in the middle of the night.
“If any engineering decisions or judgment calls came up, we had 
to have somebody on call to respond immediately because the 
clock was ticking,” Leung says. “Between LAWA inspection, LAWA’s 
construction manager and the RS&H engineering team, we had to 
coordinate to be on call, collaborate and make those decisions. 
There were a lot of decisions that we had to make on the fly.” 
As always, weather added another variable. “We didn’t want to 
start that 80-hour clock if there was rain in the forecast,” Moreno 
explains. “That meant making decisions all the way up to the 
weekend before we started that Sunday night; and that involved 
engaging with each and every tenant out there.” In the end, two 
of the 80-hour closures were postponed because of rain.
Continuous communication was essential 
throughout construction. Jessica Yas 
Barker, director of External Affairs for VNY, 
used the airport’s website IflyVNY.com to 
provide real-time updates as construction 
schedules changed. She worked directly 
with RS&H to translate detailed construction 
schedules into information airport users 
could understand. 
JESSICA YAS BARKER

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