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Indy Airport Expansion Hoosier Upgrade Indianapolis speeds away from its midwestern competition with $1 billion in greenfield airport improvements By Debra Wood
By year-end, passengers at Indianapolis International Airport will come and go from a new terminal and 7,100-car parking deck, all part of a $1.1-billion improvement project more than 30 years in the making. Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, St. Louis, developed the master plan and concept design for the terminal. The 1.2-million-sq-ft midfield terminal, rising between two runways that were built during the 1990s, replaces an existing facility that opened in 1957. The new building features an 82-ft-tall, skylighted ticketing hall with 96 counter positions and a civic plaza space with a 200-ft-dia, curved skylight 60 ft above. From the civic plaza, passengers will pass through security checkpoints with space for 22 screening lanes and enter one of two 1,300-ft-long, 20-gate concourses. The south concourse features two international gates deigned to accommodate new jumbo Airbus 380 aircraft.
Owner Indianapolis Airport Authority aims for the terminal to achieve basic LEED certification. To meet that requirement, the building will have in-floor radiant heating and cooling and contractors are using low-volatile organic compound paints, sealers and carpets. John Kish, authority executive director, says this is the first greenfield airport designed and built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The design incorporates many security features, such as an in-line baggage screening system, additional cameras and secured perimeters. Almost all construction activity has taken place outside the operational airfield to limit the need for escorts and security checks.
Runoff Mitigation The project required extensive infrastructure work to bring utilities to the greenfield site, process stormwater before releasing it and build roads to access the terminal.
Construction manager Turner/ Trotter, a joint venture between Turner Construction Co.’s Indiana subsidiary and Trotter Construction Co., both Indianapolis, received its first civil package in September 2003. Altogether, Turner/Trotter’s portion of the work exceeds $300 million and includes the sitework, stormwater system, five miles of roadways and a parking deck.
“The stormwater that flows off this site is substantial,” Kish says. “We are managing the flow rate so we don’t flood communities downstream. And we have structures to remove suspended solids.” Water leaving the parking lots passes through filters to remove oil and grease that may drip from cars. It then flows through concrete structures that induce separation of solids from the stormwater. It gets pumped to a basin where the water equalizes to normal qualities for rain and then is released to the city stormwater system. A large portion of the pipes and precast structures are underground and open at the outer edges of the airport. A separate drainage network collects deicing fluids. “It’s a fairly significant system, draining a large area with large pipes and precast sections,” says Marc Bloomfield, vice president of Turner and executive-in-charge of the airport project. Terminal Construction A joint venture of Hunt Construction Group and Smoot Construction Co., both of Indianapolis, is building the $400-million terminal and concourses. Ground was broken in 2005. Hunt provided value-engineering services, working with the owner and architects to keep the job under budget. “The things we did were different construction techniques that were more cost-effective,” says Ken Johnson, Hunt vice president, adding that value engineering saved “multiple millions.”
At the time of bidding, steel prices were rising dramatically. The airport authority added pricing terms to the contract that allowed Hunt/Smoot to raise the bid price by an index after the bid date, which enabled the authority to obtain a price closer to what was budgeted, Kish says. To rein in costs, start the job sooner and employ more local labor, Hunt recommended using concrete for the concourse building, Johnson says. Switching to concrete allowed the firm to finish that portion of the project three months early, he adds. A spread-footer foundation supports the concourses. In another cost-saving move, after consulting with Germany’s Josef Gartner GmbH, Hunt recommended redesigning the curtain wall to a more standard system suspended from roof trusses and supported by vertical bow-string trusses on tension. The trusses are made of tubular steel and vary in length from 50 ft to more than 600 ft. They are supported by exposed tubular-steel tree-like columns pinned to the floor. Roof trusses are fitted with tubular rafters that hold a series of flat glass panels, which create the curved civic plaza skylight. “It’s shaped like a potato chip,” says Ed Hole, senior construction manager for Hunt. “It has a wave to it.” In January 2007, while erecting the steel frame, a piece of steel slipped during an erection operation, Kish says. The incident delayed the job about six weeks while the contractor replaced a failed jack. No one was hurt, and tradespeople were reassigned to work in other parts of the building. Fifty-three subcontractors have worked on the project so far and Hunt/Smoot has kept the job under budget. Hole attributes this to researching the schedules of other local projects that require similar trades and fabricators, and working around those schedules. Hunt also holds the contract for the area’s other large project, the new stadium for football’s Indianapolis Colts. “We were ahead of them by about three months, so we picked up the bidders anxious to work on the airport,” Hole says. Hunt/Smoot’s scope of work includes an $80-million paving contract for a 110-acre, 22-in.-thick concrete apron and taxiway, installing piping and a hydrant-fueling system in the apron area and building an elevated pedestrian bridge to the parking garage. Parking Garage Turner/Trotter is building the 2.5 million-sq-ft, cast-in-place, post-tensioned concrete parking structure. The five-level garage features a center atrium to let in natural light.
To allow cars to park in either an east-west or north-south direction, important to the rental car agencies locating in the garage, ARCHonsortium of Indianapolis designed the deck with 54 ft between columns in one direction and 60 ft between columns going the other way. “This gives them flexibility of configuration,” Turner’s Bloomfield says. “The design required fairly good-sized post-tension beams and post-tension slabs to accommodate that larger bay size.” Crews poured concrete through two winters, using microsilica in the mix to produce a denser product and decrease water infiltration during tough midwestern freeze-thaw cycles, says Andy Wishart, senior project manager for Turner. “In Indiana, where you have a lot of road salts used, this is a big deal for a parking deck,” he says. The team lost only a few days when temperatures dipped to single digits. “One downside to it is you have limited time to finish it,” Wishart says. “You have to put the concrete down, float it out, groom it, get the surface finish, get it covered and keep it wet for two weeks.” Concrete blankets trapped heat generated by the concrete as it cured. The team poured about 540 cu yd per placement. There is about 120,000 cu yd of concrete in the garage. “Each pour had to be that size, based on the post-tensioning design,” Wishart says. “Once you started a pour, you had to complete it out to the construction joint, based on where the break, the post-tensioning design, had to be. Also, we had to stress the concrete within 48 hours, and it had to reach 75% of its design strength within that 48 hours.” Associated Work
The airport project included a new energy plant, placed in a former airline maintenance facility, which will provide hot and chilled water to the terminal and supply a planned hotel. The plant connects to the terminal through a 5,800-ft-long utility corridor, of which 2,016 was tunneled with a 9-ft-dia tunnel-boring machine beneath the north runway and two taxiways. Midwest Mole of Indianapolis performed the burrowing for Bowen Engineering Corp. of Fishers, Ind. The machine moved 22 ft below grade at 2 in. per hour. The airport shut the north runway down for four weeks while the machine was beneath it and put sensors on the airfield to ensure any settlement problems could be identified early. The Federal Aviation Administration and Indianapolis Airport Authority built a new Air Traffic Control Tower and Terminal Radar Approach Control building, which opened in 2006. Hunt/Smoot also performed that work.
In addition, the Indiana Dept. of Transportation relocated a portion of Interstate 70 and built a new interchange to serve the airport. That job wrapped up in 2004. Altogether, the projects have come together on time and within budget. The airport authority set a minority participation goal of 20%, which has been met.
All photos courtesy of Indianapolis Airport Authority
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