Planning for Resiliency Enabled PIT to Operate Seamlessly During Construction

Pittsburgh International Airport is transforming its campus this year with a new terminal, parking structure and roadway system, all while the airport continues to serve tens of thousands of passengers every day amid the construction. 

“Our imperatives of this airport are safety, security and health—that’s for our passengers and employees—as well as air service,” said Paul Hoback, executive vice president and chief development officer of the Allegheny County Airport Authority. 

“And this project means all of those pieces are intersecting.” 

Constructing a project that spans approximately 6 million square feet next to an active airport and within restricted airspace is a daunting task. 

ACAA understood from the outset that airport operations would need to adjust during construction, so the focus became minimizing the impact of those changes. 

“The intent was to work closely with the project team, not to work in silos, to ensure that the project could happen within the operating environment in a way that decreased the impact on passengers,” said Travis McNichols, ACAA’s chief operations officer. 

One of the key strategies to separate the construction from the existing operations involved the roadway system. 

PIT leaders’ decision to close a taxiway and establish a separate security checkpoint for construction workers and deliveries proved beneficial in many ways.  

It enabled the airport to keep about 1,200 vehicles—the personal vehicles of the workers and construction equipment—off the current roadways leading to the terminal, thereby reducing congestion for passengers. 

The checkpoint was established at a separate exit from the I-376, redirecting all construction traffic away from the airport entrance and roadway systems (except when work being completed on the roadways themselves). 

“Removing that traffic was critical,” Hoback said, “and it allowed Taxiway Bravo to also become a logistics area for construction deliveries, material storage space and all the construction activities, which is huge.”  

Transforming Taxiway Bravo into a new security checkpoint for workers on the construction site also improved the safety of those working on the program as well as those at the airport. 

“We instituted a security protocol so that workers could go through safety program training, receive their badge, and allow us to have notification of where they’re at on the site to give us that peace of mind that if there were an incident somewhere, we could respond, mitigate, and find where our workers are,” McNichols said. 

Once a solution was found to minimize the impact on passengers, challenges still needed to be solved in regard to how the buildings would be constructed. And that ranged from below the ground to high in the sky. 

The current terminal at PIT utilizes an underground train system to connect passengers to the gate area from the TSA checkpoint. That means that any work done above the tunnel system is significantly restricted. 

“Those tunnels are really the lifeblood of the airport—it’s how we move people back and forth, it’s how we move goods back and forth,” Hoback said. “You have to maintain those tunnels and their integrity.” 

If solutions weren’t found to keep the train system operational, PIT would have had to bus passengers continuously from the landside terminal to the airside terminal—upwards of 2,000 people an hour at peak times—for years during construction. 

“It would’ve created a real operational nightmare if those trains had to shut down,” McNichols said. 

One clear example of the accommodation to the tunnel system is seen in the design of the new Multi-Modal Complex parking structure. The corner of the building is situated above the train tunnel, so the design was modified to reduce the weight at that corner to ensure the tunnel would not be impacted. 

Restrictions were put on cranes operating above the train tunnels, as well. 

The cranes also presented operational challenges. Building the new terminal required cranes that reached heights of 250 feet, which posed an issue because the airspace is restricted to ensure passenger safety. 

To address the restrictions, a daily protocol was established for all crane operators on-site to receive permission before “booming up, ” or raising the long arm of the crane. 

“Every morning when cranes needed to go up, the construction team knew they needed to call operations and have that conversation,” McNichols said. “Operations would talk with the tower and get certification for that and communicate back that they could put the cranes up.” 

This connection also allowed the tower to contact crane operators quickly if a crane needed to boom down, in the event of adverse weather or simply to clear the airspace. 

The coordination needed to build a new terminal while seamlessly operating the airport also included daily calls with the construction and the operations teams to ensure everyone knew what was happening on the airfield every day. Additionally, construction crews were added to the emergency response message system, connecting them with police and fire teams on the airport property. 

“Everything comes back to a partnership, and it was definitely a close working relationship from a public safety standpoint,” McNichols said. 

“We have to make sure we’re continuously allowing for the safe and efficient movement of our traveling public and our employees, and when you’re doing construction like this, you need to keep the airport alive,” Hoback said.