Skip to main content

Improved runway facility for Florida’s Fort Lauderdale Airport

Florida’s Fort Lauderdale- Hollywood International Airport (FLL) is now benefiting from an upgraded runway. A key portion of the work has been carried out using equipment from Minnich. The airport handles about 23 million passengers/year and with about 3 million of those from international flights, there was a need to develop the facility to cope with the larger aircraft used on international flights. The Broward County Aviation Department was responsible for the work and specified that the runway exp
August 18, 2015 Read time: 3 mins
The Minnich machine can be controlled remotely, allowing the operator to stand at a safe distance while also allowing good views of the working area
Florida’s Fort Lauderdale- Hollywood International Airport (FLL) is now benefiting from an upgraded runway. A key portion of the work has been carried out using equipment from Minnich.

The airport handles about 23 million passengers/year and with about 3 million of those from international flights, there was a need to develop the facility to cope with the larger aircraft used on international flights.

The Broward County Aviation Department was responsible for the work and specified that the runway expansion would cover approximately 407,190m2 of concrete. To handle the work, 4760 Archer Western Construction was awarded the project for the paving of FLL’s 10R28L runway.

The expansion of runway 10R28L included several challenges. The 2423 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated that the new south runway be ready for aircraft use by the third quarter of 2014. In addition, the airport needed to remain fully functional during the expansion process.

The budget for Archer Western’s portion of the renovation was about US$87 million. The runway-paving contract was part of a larger expansion, including two bridge structures and an embankment to elevate the new runway over US-1 and the FEC Railway lines.

An integral part in the concrete paving process was reinforcing and aligning the concrete slabs with dowel pins. Once a concrete slab cures, dowel-pin holes are drilled in the sides of the slab, and dowel pins are inserted into the holes. At that point, the crew can pour the adjacent slab of concrete, and it will ensure that the slabs are properly aligned and reinforced. The runway expansion project required approximately 172,000 dowel-pin holes to be drilled and the contractor required a productive piece of equipment to complete this process.

Archer Western chose the 286 Minnich A-4SCW (four-gang, self-propelled, wireless) dowel-pin drill, equipped with the optional dust collection system. The Minnich A-4SCW proved to be a valuable companion throughout the process, drilling four holes at a time. By attaching the A-4SCW to a portable air compressor, the crew was able to drive the unit along the slab while standing at a safe distance.

Archer Western equipped the unit with Minnich’s optional dust collection kit, a dust collection system using a vacuum attached to each of the drills that minimises dust and debris and reduces clean-up times. This improved safety both for the airport environment and also for the crew.

The firm also chose the Minnich machine because it is self-propelled and can be controlled remotely, keeping the operator at a safe distance, while also allowing accurate hole-spotting.

On site the crew averaged about 30 seconds to drill four holes using the Minnich machine, which met with the productivity requirements of the tight working schedule.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Updated pavers for Guntert & Zimmerman
    January 16, 2017
    Guntert & Zimmerman is now offering the latest version of its S600 concrete paver. This meets the latest emissions requirements for North America and Europe. Like earlier versions of the S600, the latest version suits duties in city streets, secondary roads, highway and airport paving, as well as applications such as barrier walls, off-set paving and zero or minimum clearance paving.
  • Machine control technology shortens road contract
    May 28, 2013
    The use of sophisticated machine control technology has helped halve the schedule required for a road contract – Jeff Winke. By using the latest machine control systems on the equipment fleet, a US contractor has managed to halve worker hours, machine time and overall costs. “We chopped 50% off the contract schedule,” said Jim Swenson, licensed professional land surveyor for Oregon Mainline Paving based in McMinnville, Oregon. “The project was completed a year ahead of the two-year schedule,” he explained
  • Yeti more autonomous snow-clearing by Semcon
    January 9, 2019
    Semcon, a Swedish applied automation company, said it has started an on-site project to clear snow from runway landing lights using autonomous vehicles. Most often the time-consuming job of clearing snow around landing lights has to be done manually because of the intricate maneouvres needed to avoid damaging the lighting systems. The trial project, which started this month, will be demonstrated in about a year’s time at Örnsköldsvik Airport, around 525km north of the Swedish capital Stockholm, accord
  • Sandvik introduces smart drilling rig system
    March 9, 2016
    Sandvik has developed a sophisticated radio remote controlled drill rig technology. The new remote screen is a wireless screen solution for radio remote controlled drill rigs. This new solution allows the attachment of the screen to the radio remote controller, offering a considerable advance over earlier systems installed inside the cab. The remote screen is based on a common mobile device hardware platform with an Android operating system. Practically, this means that any mobile device can be chose