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AirportImprovement.com      October 2026
AIRFIELD LIGHTING 
MGM
building, with ADB SAFEGATE and RDI Enclosures working 
cooperatively and concurrently. Hutcheson Construction, the 
general contractor for Phase 1, was allotted 60 calendar days to 
complete the onsite “dirt work”—pouring the building foundation 
and digging paths throughout the airfield for the extensive 
underground electrical wiring that feeds into the building.
The location of the new standalone airfield vault, just north 
of the air traffic control tower, was selected to enable site 
construction to largely occur “outside the fence.” This helped 
airport operations proceed with minimal interruption and also 
simplified the credentialling process for crew members. 
Undeterred by the Weather
The new 800-square-foot vault was built in two separate sections 
that crews placed atop a custom foundation and connected onsite 
in January 2025. Each portion required its own wide-load semi to 
transport it over 750 miles from Itasca to Montgomery. One section 
of the structure weighed 26,000 pounds; the other part, which 
contained all of the electrical equipment, was nearly twice as heavy.
Mother Nature was not kind to the crews that transported and 
erected vault. A snowstorm on the front end of the trip buried the 
Midwest and dropped record-breaking amounts of accumulation 
throughout the northern Gulf Coast. Montgomery received only 
1/2 inch of wet snow, but up to 5 inches fell in surrounding 
counties. Because the installation site was only accessible via a 
gravel road, the final stretch of delivery was messy and slow. 
After both trucks made it to the site, crews carefully lifted each 
section of the building into place using forklifts and a crane. 
Electrical connections were then established. 
“We had to rough in all the electrical and make sure we hit 
pre-cut holes in the floor,” recalls Paul Hutcheson, owner of 
Hutcheson Construction. “It was a huge 
challenge. 
“We worked off drawings that showed 
exactly what the building was going to look 
like,” he continues. “As long as that building 
showed up the way the drawings said it 
would, we were OK. We had pockets in the 
floor that were 6-by-18 inches, and we had 
to get six 2-inch conduits to land perfectly in 
the middle of a field with nothing to go off of and make sure it all 
married up.”
Crews worked through the bitterly cold January night to make 
it happen. 
Rewiring the Field, Updating Lights
With the new vault complete, work began on Phase 2, the airfield 
cabling, signage and lighting replacement. Onsite work for Phase 
2 started in March 2026 and is expected culminate in spring 2027 
with a final changeover to the new electrical vault. 
“Our challenge in Phase 2 was to find a way to keep the 
existing lighting system active during the 
day with the airport open while we built the 
new one,” says Matt Thomason, Alabama 
aviation leader for Goodwyn Mills Cawood. 
That included minimizing airfield construction 
traffic to avoid disrupting MGM’s ongoing 
commercial service, general aviation traffic 
and military operations associated with 
the 187th Fighter Wing of the Alabama Air 
National Guard. 
“When we switch over from one electrical vault to the other, it 
must be a literal flip of the switch to avoid closure,” Thomason 
emphasizes. 
To satisfy FAA requirements on spacing and layout, Goodwyn 
Mills Cawood staggered the location of the new system within FAA 
guidelines as to not interfere with the active system. “Care was 
taken at every step to ensure clear visibility to the active system for 
pilots to maintain their situational awareness,” says Thomason. 
“For the runway lighting, we utilized a ‘trunk and branch’ 
method for the new copper cabling,” he explains. “The trunk line 
was positioned outside the runway safety area (RSA) so as to 
not require shutdown of the runway during daytime construction. 
Branch lines come into the RSA off the trunk line to connect to 
the edge lighting fixtures. This enabled minimal shutdown except 
for the work inside the RSA. We reduced the runway closure to 
overnights only with minimal impacts on the airport’s users.” 
Access for future maintenance was also a key consideration. 
“At every branch/trunk intersection, we have a three-way junction 
can to pull wire and perform splices as necessary for both 
construction and facilitating long-term maintenance,” Thomason 
details. “For areas outside the runway, we utilized a detailed 
phasing plan to enable operations to fully continue on the taxiway/
apron network while allowing the contractor to close sections for 
daytime work.”
MATT THOMASON
PAUL HUTCHESON

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