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AirportImprovement.com      October 2026
INFO TECHNOLOGY 
LCQ | VDI
technology that fits in a shirt pocket. 
Engineers arrived with a mobile “Field Map” 
application, custom built in-house on Esri’s 
ArcGIS platform and loaded onto ordinary 
cellphones. Before anyone set foot on the 
airfield, every pavement area was geo-
located and pre-loaded into the app, with 
standard pavement distress categories 
available as drop-down menus. AutoCAD 
Civil 3D linework defining each panel was 
layered into the map as well.
In the field, the workflow was simple: 
Walk the runway, photograph each slab, 
log its condition. Each photo was tagged 
automatically with its location, and the 
app updated in real time. A progress bar 
showed which areas had been assessed, 
with specific condition data logged. 
According to Passero, the streamlined 
process allowed a single engineer to 
assess the entire 5,000-foot runway 
and part of its parallel taxiway— 2,147 
pavement areas—in just two days.
“Passero was able to take a picture 
of each individual slab, then analyze that 
slab: Can we just put a crack seal on top 
of it, like they crack seal roadways, or do 
we need to excavate the panel and do a 
full-depth replacement?” Ragan explains.  
The burden on VDI was close to zero. 
“We really didn’t have to help them at 
all,” Ragan recalls. “They just checked in 
with us, had their aviation radios, and we 
monitored the frequency from inside.” The 
engineer leading the effort had worked 
with the airport for four or five years and 
knew the field. “There was no assistance 
required from my staff.”
Because traffic at the uncontrolled 
airfield isn’t nearly as busy as nearby 
commercial airports, the crew simply 
pulled off the runway when pilots called in 
to land, and then went back to work after 
the aircraft taxied away. Some pavement 
conditions were visible immediately in the 
field; the fully compiled analysis followed 
a couple weeks later. “The engineers were 
prepared from the moment they accessed 
the airfield and were able to report specific 
distress areas by the time they completed 
the work on the same day,” Ragan reports. 
The ultimate payoff was a slab-by-
slab treatment map that will benefit the 
subsequent rehabilitation project through 
completion. “It helps us identify which 
slabs we can just seal the cracks, and 
which slabs have to come out all the way 
down to the dirt,” Ragan says. “That’s 
going to help save money, too, because 
we’re not pulling out every slab.” 
800 Acres in a Day
Lake City Gateway Airport (LCQ) in 
northern Florida had a different issue—
water—and management needed a 
comprehensive stormwater study to 
address flooding issues in three primary 
drainage basins. The airfield includes an 
8,003-foot primary runway; steady traffic 
from business jets; a maintenance, repair 

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