Portland International Airport employees and various media members on Saturday got some of the first looks of the main terminal’s new nine-acre mass-timber roof – the centerpiece of the $2 billion PDX Next project.

For the past three years, the heart of the airport has been largely closed except to construction crews. During that time a sense of curiosity grew among employees who work at the airport daily and hear noises and feel vibrations from the site. With the roof installed, employees finally got to peek behind walls and see for the first time what all that work produced, said Kama Simonds, media affairs manager for the Port of Portland.

This past fall, crews started to transport the massive roof modules from their assembly area in the northeast corner of the airport property to the main terminal site three-quarters of a mile away. Moving each section required two to three nights, Simonds said.

The endeavor called for each module to be raised off the ground 55 feet to the support column height by a self-propelled modular transporter. Then each piece was carried across the airfield at about 3 miles per hour.

Earlier this month, crews with Hoffman-Skanska Joint Venture placed the final roof module. That allowed the project to move into its next phase – on schedule.

The roof installation “was really well planned, and well executed,” Simonds said.

Next on the list is installation of a curtain wall of windows that will stretch from one end of the terminal to the other and look out to the airfield.

Right now, it is kind of a three-sided box, Simonds said. Once the window wall is in place, the space will be enclosed, and crews will be able to begin interior work.

The airport’s long-anticipated new main terminal – including a new entryway, concessions, and natural aspects – is set for completion in 2025. It’s expected to open to the public in May 2024.

Work, however, will continue to occur out of public view on both sides of the terminal. Around six more roof modules – the last ones – remain to be installed over new security checkpoints.

The post Look up! PDX has a nine-acre mass-timber roof appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The saying “no small feat” barely encapsulates construction of the RCC Building at Portland International Airport.

The new six-story, 90,000-square-foot building (also known as the Parking Additions and Consolidated Rental Car facility, or PACR) holds the Transportation Security Administration‘s Portland headquarters, a rental car center, the port police headquarters and a central communications center.

General contractor JE Dunn Construction completed the RCC Building project on schedule in early July after three years of work. Meanwhile, the firm also is serving as the general contractor for “P3” – a seven-story, 1.65-million-square-foot parking structure adjacent to the building. That project is expected to conclude by early November.

The JE Dunn Construction crew included superintendent Jeff Byrne, project manager Stacey Flint, project engineer Sage Guttes and field engineer Kelsey Chan.

This was the first time Byrne worked on a project with a team of women, he said.

“We couldn’t have done it without any one of us,” he said.

There were 13 different design packages, six sets of project specifications, and 11 different general contracting permits for the RCC Building. Most projects just have one general contracting permit, Flint said.

Before constructing the foundation, the team spent over a year performing preliminary site work such as rerouting traffic and nearly 1,600 lineal feet of utility piping – including the main power-feed to the whole control tower.

“This project has been an absolute beast – a pleasure, but a beast of a project,” Flint said. “It’s huge. It’s complex.”

The site is near a busy airport that sees an average of 13,000 flights per month. The RCC Building sits between a runway, an airport terminal, a parking structure, the central utility plant, and a quick turnaround facility for rental car companies to clean and refuel motor vehicles.

When asked about the overarching challenges of the project, Flint said there were many.

“Really honestly, the permits, the drawing packages and the amount of preparatory enabling work we needed to do, and the complexity and the danger of the work being underground,” she said.

The underground work was for the Underground East Pedestrian Tunnel to link the Federal Aviation Administration tower, the central utility plant and “P2” (the existing parking structure). The tunnel had less than a foot of clearance on either side of it. Plus, with the weight of a parking structure, a control tower and a utility plant pressing down, the tunnel’s sides were put under immense pressure.

“We basically slipped this tunnel in there,” Flint said.

Meanwhile, both the parking structure and the RCC Building are loaded with seismic resiliency. With the latter serving as a command center for PDX operations, it was imperative that mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems be resilient. Isolated seismic floors in both the communications center and a data center will help ensure that. During a sizable earthquake, the entire building could be shaking, but each floor will remain stable – thanks to square, metal frames underneath that have wheels and are bolted down by a spring.

Also, running through the middle of the tunnel is the duct bank that holds all fiber-optic cables for PDX. Workers had to uncover the duct bank underground very carefully, Flint said. Any hard knock to the duct bank, she said, would cause all internet service at the airport to twitch.

“That’s how sensitive it is,” she said.

The work had to be done with hand tools because chipping wasn’t allowed. Once the duct bank was exposed, the crew completely encased it in steel scaffolding for support.

“We had our fingers crossed and breath held many times,” Flint said.

The duct bank had to be crossed seven times during construction, but building the tunnel around it was the hardest, Flint said.

“Thank goodness we did that almost two years ago now,” she said. “… You walk through it and are like ‘Man, this sucked,’ but we did it.”

The RCC Building was built in two phases, with 13 phases of work beforehand. More than 110 trade partners participated.

“I think that it was a great challenge – one of the most logistically complex projects that I have been a part of,” Byrne said.

Touting opportunities for women

Working on a team with mostly women wasn’t new for Flint. The first time she worked on a project full time for JE Dunn, she served as a project engineer; there was a female project manager and a male superintendent. Her next project had the same team composition.

“Honestly not uncommon for my life to have a strong … female-led project, and I’m really thankful for that,” Flint said. “I’m trying to heavily recruit women into the industry. I think they just need to know that they can do this and that this is a viable and extremely rewarding career option for them.”

Flint started in construction 10 years ago via a chance meeting, she said. There were significantly fewer females in the industry at that time, she added.

“Then the fact that my first project had a female project manager who was an absolute rock star – it was just like ‘wow,’ and this is awesome and something that we can do,” she said.

This was the first time Flint worked with Guttes and Chan.

“They are absolutely the future of construction for the JE Dunn Portland office,” Flint said. “Proud of this entire team.”

The post ‘A pleasure, but a beast of a project’ appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The single largest project in the overhaul of Portland International Airport – creation of a new main terminal – is well under way.

But instead of a typical ground-up building process, construction of the most striking and eye-catching portion of that new structure – its roof – is taking place in the northeast corner of the airport property, next to the Port of Portland Fire Department headquarters.

Designed by ZGF Architects to emulate Oregon’s lush forestlands, the mass-timber roof is an ode to the local environment. The undulating structure consists of a skeleton of enormous steel girders fabricated by Evraz in Portland. Those are connected by a series of massive, arching glulam beams made from Douglas fir by Zip-O-Log Mills of Eugene. Topping it off are hundreds of two-inch mass-plywood panels made by Freres Lumber of Lyons.

“It was very important to Port of Portland leadership, so they worked strategically with ZGF on developing the specifications on this prescribed sourcing,” said Katrina Day, a senior project manager with Hoffman Skanska Joint Venture, the project’s general contractor. “It’s intended as a nod to the local community and making sure that we’re reinvesting in Oregon for the project.”

The prefabricated roof is an ingenious solution to some unique construction problems.

First is the building site: a busy international airport that before the pandemic was serving nearly 20 million travelers per year. The sheer volume of people moving though PDX and the importance of the airport as a travel hub means it cannot be shut down for construction – and assembling the roof in place would have required that for safety and security reasons.

“If you stick-built this over the terminal, these members are too big,” Hoffman Skanska senior superintendent Jason Koski said. “You couldn’t build anything like this and have an occupied building. So, by doing these large modules, we’re able to keep the terminal open at all times during construction.”

Instead, the project team took over a 20-acre site next to the near the fire department headquarters and poured a reinforced concrete pad engineered to support the weight of not only the roof structure, but also the massive hydraulic jacks and self-propelled modular transporters that will be used to move the finished roof segments across the airport’s north runway to their eventual home.

“We’ll set those at night in roughly a six-hour window where we can shut the building down,” Koski said.

The full roof will be assembled in spring 2022 from 20 separate pieces. Of those, 16 will be “super modules” featuring arched glulam beams topped with mass-plywood panels fabricated by Freres Lumber and milled into shape by Swinerton subsidiary Timberlab at its Northeast Portland plant. The other four will be smaller “cassettes” to fill in spaces left over.

“Nobody has ever made them to this standard, and nobody has ever made an arched glulam this large,” Day said. “In fact, in the design, they were spliced halfway through because there was no standard for designing to know whether they were constructable. So, Zip-O (employees) took it upon themselves to build a full-size mockup to ensure we could eliminate the splice.”

That effort was successful, and the resulting 80-foot-long beams are up to 9 feet tall.

The wood for the glulams was sourced from local forestlands managed by the Yakama, Coquille and Skokomish tribes as well as other landowners practicing responsible forest management.

“We’re putting our first layer of roofing on,” Koski said. “And we’re putting in all the lighting conduit, the fire alarm conduit, the sprinkler system, the roof drains, and then acoustical panels.”

About 60 percent of the lattice that decorates the interior part of the structure in graceful curves will be installed beforehand, according to Swinerton superintendent Brendan Kelly.

A lot of work was needed in the design and engineering phase to come up with the plan, Port of Portland Construction Services Manager Brad Harrison added.

“We started from scratch, but to stick-build this thing it became apparent that it would almost shut down the airport,” he said. “The contractor was like, the more modular construction you can do, the better, from a whole cost perspective and a safety perspective.”

The post Sizable structure’s pieces coming together appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

PDX Next – the ambitious, five-year, $2 billion effort to improve and expand Portland International Airport – is now in full swing. While construction of a new main terminal will surely stand out, some smaller projects – relatively speaking – also are taking place to expand passenger concourses on both the north and south sides of the airport.

Concourse E, home to Southwest Airlines, is complete. And work is moving quickly on Concourse B for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. A Hoffman Construction/Skanska USA Building joint venture is serving as the general contractor for both the main terminal project (“T-Core”) and Concourse B. The latter will feature 11 new passenger gates – five with raised, enclosed walkways connecting to aircraft, and six ground-level ones for smaller commuter planes.

“Normally CCB (Concourse B) would be a giant project for the Port, and it’s dwarfed by T-Core,” said Scott Sparman, a construction manager for the Port of Portland. “It’s a long overdue upgrade for these particular customers.

“The old structure was more of a temporary structure. There were some B gates up here in the existing part of the concourse that served the larger aircraft, but now we’re going to have more capacity here.”

Concourse B was designed by ZGF Architects, and crews broke ground in early 2020. The structure will feature a massive amount of glazing wrapped around a stout, seismically enhanced steel framework erected by ironworkers with By Design Steel. The two-story concourse will largely function as a single story, with a wraparound upper-level walkway on the north side allowing access from the main terminal. From there, people will reach the lower level via stairs or an elevator. Food and drink will be available from businesses such as Screen Door and specialty coffee roaster Good Coffee.

“We’re still going to have the main processing of passengers in the old room there,” Sparman said. “And then passengers are going to flow down here and get on their gates.”

Right now, the new concourse is still open to the elements. But Snyder Roofing is installing the roof and Western Partitions is quickly framing the exterior walls; mechanical, electrical and plumbing work is ongoing throughout the space. Work on the building envelope is expected to finish over the summer. The Port expects the new terminal to be ready for use sometime in November.

The narrow, ground-level gates for Horizon Air that extend eastward almost seem separate from the rest of the project. But those, too, are now enclosed and undergoing MEP work.

“There are a lot of things opening this fall, so we’re going to sequence that,” Sparman said. “It does look like there’s a lot to do, but we have the hard part done. The rest of it is finishes, building envelope, and that’s coming in May. In another month this is going to look like something you could just hang out in.”

Concourse B will eventually have a custom art installation crafted by Ryan Feddersen, a Native American artist based in Tacoma, Washington. Crafted entirely from wood, the installation will cover the concourse’s south wall at ground level.

So far, Sparman said, the most difficult aspect of the Concourse B project is its location. It sits between an active taxiway on the south side and TriMet‘s MAX light-rail infrastructure on the north side. Those transportation corridors have remained in full service during construction.

“Erecting steel (and) bringing in materials through a security checkpoint, that’s the biggest thing,” he said.

“It’s not dissimilar to Concourse E, where it’s between a taxi area and a roadway,” Port of Portland spokeswoman Kama Simonds added. “There are similar constraints, just on the other side of the airport.”

The post Another PDX project on final approach appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

A lot of work is under way at Portland International Airport, including construction of a new main terminal, a new office building for Port of Portland officials and a new parking garage and rental car complex.

One recent endeavor involved the 700-foot-long concourse connector, a post-security hallway that formerly allowed airport visitors to move between the north and south wings. The structure needed to be removed in order to accommodate future construction.

“Rather than simply demolish the building, we decided to split it in half and reuse it,” Kama Simonds, the Port of Portland’s media relations manager, stated in a news release.

One half of the concourse connector was moved to the south side of the airport during the week of March 15-19, and then the other half was moved to the north side the following week.

Each half of the concourse connector weighs around 9,000 tons. Both were moved by five self-propelled modular transporters synchronized to a single remote control. A single operator walked next to each connector as it crawled across the tarmac to its new home. Additional spotters were on hand to avoid any potential collisions.

“Each half of the building becomes a bypass to help people move safely around the construction area at the airport’s core,” Simonds stated. “The bypasses will be in place for several years to help travelers easily get to their gates while the construction continues behind insulated walls.”

Also taking place at the airport these days is underground utility work for the new main terminal. Meanwhile, crews are preparing for the closure of the Clocktower Plaza that holds pre-security shops and restaurants. That closure will allow installation of enormous Y-shaped columns to support the new roof.

The main terminal will expand 150 feet beyond its western border. The roof, with a distinctive wooden ceiling made of locally sourced timber, will be installed beginning in 2022.

Elsewhere at PDX, crews are continuing to expand and upgrade Concourse B, which will serve Alaska Airlines. That work is on track to finish later this year.

In addition, the new ground transportation hub is scheduled to open in November.

The post PDX infrastructure divided, relocated for reuse appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

It will take three nights to move each of about 20 massive roof modules into place as part of the Portland International Airport‘s $1.5 billion main terminal project.

A self-propelled modular transporter able to haul submarines and bridge spans will move the roof modules from a 20-acre concrete slab to the lay-down position at the jobsite. Moving each module into place will take one night.

“Remember the old NASA when they roll the rockets out? It kind of looks like that,” said Brad Harrison, senior manager of construction services for the Port of Portland.

On the second night, the columns will be raised and placed on the first part of large Y-columns and sliding towers. They’ll reach their final positions on the third night.

Erection of the roof is only one part of the $2 billion package of airport projects known as PDX Next. The main terminal renovation, led by a joint venture of Hoffman Construction Co. and Skanska USA, is the largest individual project. It involves unusual construction methods and techniques seen only in some of the largest projects in the U.S.

The PDX Next projects are intended to modernize the airport. PDX is the nation’s 30th-busiest airport, with about 9.8 million passenger trips per year. the best U.S. airport for six consecutive years before it narrowly ceded the top spot in this year’s ranking to Indianapolis.

The main terminal project is in an enabling phase. Retail tenants and airlines are being moved to make way for construction.

The roof alone will have 1,000 tons of steel. The structure also will have 2.5 million board feet of timber. At its peak, 660 craft workers will be employed on the project.

Erection of the roof modules and Y-columns will begin in 2022. The main terminal project is expected to be completed in 2025. All of the work must be done while allowing the airport to continue normal operations.

ZGF Architects designed the main terminal project. Sharron van der Meulen, a ZGF partner, stated in a news release that the design is “inspired by the forests of the Pacific Northwest.”

Wood is the major material used on the roof’s interior. It’s being sourced by Swinerton Mass Timber for the Hoffman Skanska joint venture. The glulam beams are being manufactured by Zip-O-Laminators of Eugene in swooping, curved single pieces, the longest of which are 80 feet. Calvert Co. of Vancouver, Washington, is manufacturing flat beams.

The long beams simplify the structure, both from a construction and aesthetic perspective, said Katrina Day, the Hoffman Skanska project manager for the main terminal roof.

“It really simplifies the design and aesthetics as far as not having additional spliced components at the halfway point,” she said.

Freres Lumber Co., based in Lyons, is supplying the 2-inch mass-plywood panels that serve as the roof diaphragm.

The project leadership, including the client and architects, “prescribed a very specific sourcing story for the wood,” Day said. Wood materials are being sourced regionally, with specific segregation and sorting. All of the wood in the project comes from the Pacific Northwest, Day said.

Choosing sustainable, regionally sourced materials was important to the project, Harrison said.

“When you think of Oregon, you think of the Northwest, you think of wood,” he said.

Regional sourcing extends to the steel. EVRAZ steel mill in North Portland is rolling the steel, and Greenberry Industrial in Vancouver, Washington, is manufacturing the steel girders that will hold the mass-timber pieces.

The new roof is being constructed over the existing one, and the old roof will be demolished in phases as the new roof is built and waterproofed.

Seismic concerns are among the project’s driving motivations. The roof is designed to travel 24 inches in any direction during an earthquake, Day said, reducing the chances of structural failure.

KPFF is the engineering firm for the project, and HNTB is providing civil infrastructure support. Mammoet USA North Inc. is the transport company that performs the jacking, transport and sliding of major roof components.

The post Preparing to raise the roof … and set it in place appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Upgrades totaling more than $2 billion are taking place at Portland International Airport, and work on the largest single project is ramping up.

The $1.5 billion effort to transform the main terminal is one of several ongoing and planned projects at PDX to provide flexible, state-of-the-art facilities. Together, the projects are known as PDX Next.

“It’s really designed to take us out into the future,” said Vince Granato, chief projects officer with the Port of Portland.

On Thursday, the Daily Journal of Commerce hosted a Builder Breakfast virtual panel discussion during which executives from Portland’s Hoffman Construction, national giant Skanska USA and the Port of Portland talked about upcoming work at the airport.

Led by a joint venture of Hoffman and Skanska, the main terminal project will involve installation of a nearly 8.5-acre roof designed to withstand a strong earthquake.

Bids for the roof structure and related work are due Tuesday. That will be followed by the mechanical, electrical and demolition packages, for which documents are likely to be issued in November; bids will be due in December, said Joe Schneider, senior vice president in Skanska’s Portland office.

“There are opportunities there for sub-tier participation,” he said.

Next summer, contracts related to interior finish work will go out to bid, Schneider said.

PDX Next will deliver its first major project Wednesday, when the $215 million Concourse E extension, headed up by Skanska, is scheduled to open.

The main terminal, a stitched-together structure comprising six separate buildings that were constructed at different times under different codes, hasn’t been updated in more than 20 years, Granato said. The existing structure is seismically vulnerable, he added.

“That building would not survive” a 9.5-magnitude Cascadia subduction zone earthquake, he said.

ZGF Architects‘ design for the new main terminal building focuses on extensive use of wood to “keep the warmth and feel of the airport,” Granato said.

The Port of Portland held focus groups to help guide development of the PDX Next projects. Participants said they valued the existing airport, which is regularly ranked among the best in the United States.

“They basically said don’t screw it up,” Granato said. “We want to retain the soul of the airport, but we know it needs to change.”

The main terminal will be expanded 150 feet to the west from where it is today. That will provide more room for passenger security and health screening as well as flexibility for unknown future needs, Granato said.

The joint venture partners are working in integrated teams rather than parceling out some work for Skanska and some work for Hoffman.

“Creating a joint venture team that could tackle this, and could handle and bring the experience that was relevant to not only (the) local airport but national airports, I thought was really something that was important,” said Dave Garske, vice president of Hoffman Construction.

Other PDX Next projects include the Concourse B redevelopment, slated for delivery in summer 2021 by the Hoffman-Skanska joint venture, and the parking garage addition and rental car consolidation project, a $282 million build-out led by JE Dunn Construction that is scheduled for completion in fall 2021.

The PDX team is leveraging Skanska’s work at New York’s LaGuardia Airport for peer review as well as technical and logistical help, Schneider said.

Work at the airport has encountered a number of complications. Craft workers are now parking remotely and taking buses to the project site – an arrangement that creates challenges for social distancing. As a result, buses are running at a lower capacity. Schneider said he’s in discussions with port officials whether workers may be able to use a parking garage.

“That’s our current challenge,” Schneider said. “On this project, we haven’t had any delays, which is fortunate, but just a lot of creative thinking and a can-do attitude.”

The panel discussion was moderated by Paige Spratt, a Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt shareholder who focuses on construction and real estate law.

The post More airport work opportunities on tap appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

At roughly 1.6 million square feet, the Parking Addition and Consolidated Rental Car (PACR) facility being constructed at Portland International Airport easily has the biggest footprint of any current project in the metro area.

It’s a whole lot of structural steel.

“It’s just a really, really big structure,” said Chris Hermreck, a senior project manager with general contractor JE Dunn Construction. “We’re building this garage that’s the size of these entire two (existing) buildings.”

The 2,400-space parking garage, designed by YGH Architecture, is being constructed via a progressive design-build contract. The new, seismically resilient (category 4) structure will hold Port of Portland offices, long-term parking, rental car service and offices, and a parking toll plaza.

The latter is already up and running, which enabled demolition and clearance of the old plaza, which sat where the new parking garage is on the rise. A new garage for rental car fueling, cleaning and storage has also been constructed.

One of the most significant phases of work in the entire project is under way: Ironworkers from Phoenix, Arizona-based Schuff Steel Co. have begun structural work on the 100,000-square-foot office building and five-level parking garage. Also, Carr Construction has been contracted to perform miscellaneous steel work.

Up to 50 ironworkers could be on site at one time when steel work reaches its peak later this summer, Hermreck estimated. The first column was set April 20, he added, and completion of structural work is anticipated sometime during the fourth quarter of this year.

Along with the sheer scope of work, steel erection is also challenged by the project location inside restricted Federal Aviation Administration airspace. This meant a traditional tower crane could not be used on site. Instead, crews are using a massive crawler crane with an articulated boom arm.

“This was a specially considered crane for a lot of reasons,” Hermreck said. “For capacity, and also because of the way it lays down at night. This has the reach and capacity and also the ability to get low enough.”

PACR is part of the five-year, $2 billion-plus PDX Next program in which nearly all of Portland International Airport is receiving upgrades. Construction of a new main terminal, the so-called T-Core project, is the centerpiece.

When it comes to PACR, work involves modifications to the existing P2 parking structure as well as significant improvements to surface roadways and underground utilities. Existing parking garages will connect to the new one.

JE Dunn is self-performing the concrete work for this project, while DeWitt Construction continues excavation and pile driving to accommodate construction of the new parking structure. Other major subcontractors on the job include Oregon Electric Group and JH Kelly Mechanical.

Once the new garage is complete, a temporary exit road will be shut down and a new exit connecting the new P3 garage and exit plaza will be installed.

The entire project should wrap up in 2021, according to the Port of Portland.

The post Massive structure beginning to take shape appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

With the additions of six airline gates and seven restaurants, the expansion of Portland International Airport‘s Concourse E is a big deal for travelers.

The 830-foot-long expansion, designed by Hennebery Eddy Architects and Denver-based Fentress Architects, is one project of many large ones within the Port of Portland’s huge PDX Next initiative. Others that will take place over the next several years include: remodels of concourses A and B, construction of larger security checkpoints, refurbishment of ticketing and baggage drop spaces, and the addition of rental car space. Work is expected to continue through at least 2024.

The $215 million Concourse E project is about five months from completion; it’s expected open in June. Skanska USA Building, the project’s general contractor, also is working with Hoffman Construction as a joint venture on the upcoming overhaul of the main terminal and security checkpoints, among other improvements.

The concourse expansion is taller than the existing section and has a lot more windows that will let in a lot of natural light. Three types of glazing with different opacity are being used.

In addition, the south side will feature a curtain wall system to maximize natural light and minimize heat gain inside. This feature and others are contributing to pursuit of a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design gold rating.

Right now, a host of craft workers are working on both the interior and exterior of the concourse extension. Carpenters, plasterers and laborers with Performance Contracting Inc. are framing the interior walls, ceilings and soffits, and also applying fireproofing. Meanwhile, plasterers and laborers with Professional Lath and Plaster are applying acoustic dampening material to the same walls prior to painting.

Electricians from Oregon Electric Group and O’Neill Electric are also busy with interior work, while flooring specialist Top End Terrazzo of Los Angeles is installing terrazzo tile.

The post Crews en route to final destination: completion appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

The five-year, $2 billion-plus PDX Next program calls for upgrading nearly all of Portland International Airport, piece by piece. Construction of a new main terminal is the heart of the initiative. But another critical project now under way will add a new six-story, 2,400-space parking garage, a four-story office building with an on-site car rental facility and a new exit plaza.

The new Parking Additions and Consolidated Rental Car Facility is expected to significantly help travelers and airport employees enter and exit the grounds.

“We’re really looking at it more as a transportation improvement around the whole airport,” Port of Portland spokeswoman Kama Simonds said.

YGH Architecture and JE Dunn Construction are using a progressive design-build model that allows for rapid and timely changes as needed.

The scope of work includes new offices for airport operations, additional long-term parking, a consolidated rental car facility, new rental car offices and a new and relocated parking toll plaza. Efforts that will enable these additions include modifications to the existing P2 parking structure as well as significant upgrades to surface roadways and underground utilities.

Work began over a year ago, and much has taken place since. The exit plaza building and travel lanes are nearly complete, and a new parking garage for rental car fueling, cleaning and storage has also been constructed. Another important portion of the project involves moving underground utilities out of the new buildings’ footprint.

JE Dunn is self-performing the concrete work for this project, and plenty of that remains – especially for the new parking structure. Crews are also building temporary ramps from the existing parking structures to provide egress while the new parking garage is built.

Finally, DeWitt Construction crews are excavating and pile driving to accommodate construction of the new parking structure. Because of the sensitivity of the radar systems and others used in the airport control tower, vibratory pile driving is being used instead of traditional drilling.

Much of the work involves temporary structures or solutions that will enable crews to complete permanent ones. That’s the case with a roadway being built to connect the parking structures with the new exit plaza. Once the new garage is complete, the temporary road will come out and a new roadway running straight east from the new P3 garage to the new exit plaza will be built.

“Ultimately, they will all come out on level three on P3, and it will be an elevated roadway all the way out of here,” said Anna Tindall, a Port of Portland civil engineering inspector. “You can see the squares down there – those are the piles they’ve already driven for the elevated roadway. This will all end up being an elevated roadway.”

Another crucial part of the will be the addition of a second light-rail track to the airport terminal. Currently, TriMet‘s MAX Red Line moves to and from the main terminal via a single spur line that will be replaced. The addition of a second track will ease MAX scheduling throughout the system.

Various phases of this project will roll out in stages. The new rental car storage garage is already up and running, while the new exit plaza should open in November. Then the temporary road will be constructed to clear space for construction of the P3 garage. But in the meantime, ironworkers are already building the rebar cages for the concrete beams that will tie the P2 and P3 structures together.

The complicated dance of scheduling and logistics should produce a finished parking garage by mid-2021, Simonds said.

“It’s super complex, and we’re moving everything around,” she said. “It’s crowded, and we’re making these small, micro-adjustments to make it better. But a big fix is still a couple of years off.”

The post Complex transportation improvements advancing at PDX appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.