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Since Sept. 11, heightened airport security has mandated that all baggage going aboard airliners be screened for explosives and dangerous materials.
At Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Hensel Phelps Construction Co. of Austin is performing a $20 million design-build project to permanently incorporate such procedures into airport operations.
The new baggage screening machines were hoisted up to the new level and brought in through the hole shown in front.
Photo by Sandy Stevens, courtesy the city of Austin. |
Currently, checked passenger baggage is carted to six explosive-detection-screening machines temporarily sited in the lobby of the second-level check-in area and then returned to conveyors to be sent and loaded onto airplanes. The system is inefficient and, and machines are sitting in the middle of the entry lobby.
The goal of the project, scheduled for completion in March, is to incorporate the screening process into the baggage-handling system in a seamless fashion. For more than a year before construction began in April, the Southwest district office of Hensel Phelps worked with the Austin office of PageSoutherlandPage architects and a variety of stakeholders including the Federal Aviation Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, the airport and the airlines to devise the best plan.
"Congress has mandated that all of the screening procedures are going to be inline systems," said Ron Gentry, manager of engineering and planning for the city of Austin's aviation department. "And we needed to get the six machines we have out of the lobby because they were taking up too much space. Then the FAA started a pilot program to explore design-build approaches."
Chuck Tilley, project director for PageSoutherlandPage, added: "We probably went through 20 different schemes, anywhere from putting that equipment off to the east or west side outside the building or down on the apron level. But the logical place, because you deposit the bags at the ticket counter and they end up down at the apron, was in the interstitial space--the large ceiling above the bag-claim area.
"We looked at that initially and sort of ruled it out because there was not enough headroom. Then we discovered that if we lowered the ceiling at the two ends of the baggage-claim level, we could get the headroom, put the slab there and be off and running."
The plan called for two 9,000-sq.-ft. decks to be installed at the east and west ends of the terminal lobby at an elevation 15 ft. above the baggage-claim level and 10 ft. below the ticketing level. The screening machines and operations would be installed with additional conveyors spliced into the baggage-handling system. Baggage would then be screened and sent to the loading areas on the airport apron.
"We looked at every place we could find space," Gentry said. "This was not only the cheapest option but also the least intrusive."
He added that the entire project, with one exception, doesn't affect the entry of baggage into the system at curbside and ticket counters or its exit on the airport apron for loading aboard flights. "Everything is happening between the two ends," he said.
To provide space to stitch the screening machines into the system, office space on the west end and car-rental booths and customs offices on the east end had to be temporarily relocated before the new slabs could be installed.
"We had to come in and basically cut everything down, clear out all the facilities and do a pretty massive demo operation to allow us to install the slab," said Brian Earnst, area superintendent for Hensel Phelps. He added that in the process a lot of utilities were rerouted.
Work then proceeded on the slabs behind temporary interior-walls painted to resemble the lobby design scheme. "It's like building a ship in a bottle, going into a space that's full of all kinds of stuff," said Dwight Runkels, area superintendent for Hensel Phelps.
"We have to make sure that the airport remains in operation and is impeded as little as possible due to our construction. We are obviously guests in their building, and we try to do everything we can to schedule and coordinate around their operations." Major deliveries and much of the work is being done between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. "We're working night shifts and day shifts, 22 hours a day, whatever it takes," Runkels said.
To support the new slab, about 70 steel I-beams ranging up to 45 ft. in length and 14 in. to 3 ft. in depth were installed onto the existing columns, which were sufficient to carry the load without additional work.
"Our steel erector had to thread 45-ft. beams into the above ceiling space and connect them to the existing columns," Runkels said. "The largest was 10,000 lbs. We rolled them in, jacked up one end, slid them forward and twisted them up and over using forklifts and chainfalls."
Steel decking was installed atop the beams and then a reinforced, lightweight concrete slab totaling 300 cu. yds. was poured. Then the issue became how to get the 7,000 lb. explosive detection systems into the new spaces.
"At first we thought about trying to bring them in horizontally through the glass wall on the terminal face," Tilley said. "But there wasn't enough clearance. Then one of our design team members asked, 'What if we cut a hole in the floor and bring them in from the lower level©' So that's the way we went."
A permanent 9- by 8-ft. block-out hole with a removable cast-in-place concrete panel was cut into the deck to allow the six screening machines--three at each end of the terminal--to be lifted by an electric chain hoist and to allow installation of future screening machine replacements.
"We hoisted the machines through the hole at night," Runkels said. "We had about 2 to 4 in. clearance all the way around. On the west side, when we got them up, the feet were .25 in. above the concrete when we slid them over. It was extremely tight to say the least."
With the screening machines installed, the next step will be incorporating additional conveyors into the baggage-handling system that will route bags to the screening machines then back to the loading areas on the tarmac at the flight gates.
PageSoutherlandPage hired a baggage-system consultant to design the additions, which account for about $12 million of the $17 million construction costs.
"We build the entire matrix and then we test it all out," Runkels said. "From January to March, we will start cutting into the conveyors, pull a piece out, put in the U-turns and then re-test and make sure it's working properly before we go to the next cutover.
"That's going to be a coordination challenge--performing all those conveyor cutovers with minimal impact on the traveling public and airlines."
The screening system will be in operation--yet out of sight to travelers--by April.
"There's virtually no architecture. It was all about practicality," Tilley said. "It's a perfect design-build, because it's all about sequencing and constructability."
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