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AirportImprovement.com      October 2026
AIRFIELD MAINTENANCE 
BHM | FAT | LAA | SCX | SGU | SKX 
Marcelo Lima, vice president of Planning and Development 
with the Birmingham Airport Authority, notes that the runway still 
had useful pavement life, but several years had passed since it 
had been significantly improved, and new and expanding cracks 
were becoming evident. Because 6-24 is BHM’s primary runway 
and the preferred option for airline and cargo operators, airport 
officials wanted to extend its service life without disrupting daily 
commercial operations.
Naturally, the project still required extensive coordination among 
air carriers, engineers, contractors, air traffic control, airport 
operations and the FAA. Lima says conversations with the airlines 
helped establish a work window of midnight to 4 a.m., while 
coordination with air traffic control addressed runway crossings 
and access points during closures. The airport operations team 
was responsible for issuing the necessary 
Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) and notifications 
each night.
Matthew Thomason, associate vice 
president of Aviation with RS&H, notes that 
minimizing impacts to airline operations was 
a primary objective from the outset of the 
project. As such, it influenced virtually every 
aspect of planning, from selecting the preservation treatment to 
establishing realistic nightly production goals.
Although the runway was closed for approximately four hours 
each night, the actual window crews had to work was closer 
to two hours due to critical but time-consuming closure and 
reopening procedures. To enhance efficiency during each shift, 
one subcontractor was solely dedicated to installing and removing 
closure barricades so construction crews could focus exclusively 
on their work. 
Recognizing that every step had to be completed on time for the 
runway to safely reopen each morning, the project team devoted 
considerable effort to preconstruction planning. “We performed 
trial runs ahead of the work to make sure the contractor could 
complete each night’s work within the allotted closure period,” 
Thomason recalls. Those exercises allowed the team to reduce 
uncertainty once the runway was closed each evening.
Miller agrees that detailed planning is critical because 
compressed construction schedules leave little room to recover 
from delays once the runway is closed. He emphasizes the 
importance of establishing procedures for equipment staging, 
material deliveries, staffing levels, quality control procedures and 
MATTHEW THOMASON

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