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Runway Rehabilitation at Frankfurt Airport

Facts and Figures
Company PORR Verkehrswegbau GmbH
Principal FRAPORT AG
Location Frankfurt - Germany
Type Airport
Runtime 04.2020 - 05.2020

Perfectly synchronised workflows

In February 2020, PORR Oevermann Verkehrswegebau was commissioned to rehabilitate the southern runway in Frankfurt am Main, at Europe’s fourth-largest airport. BPO Asphalt was the tool of choice for planning and optimising the challenging logistics and for the construction documentation.

The runway rehabilitation contract covers an area of 250,000m², which translates into approximately 60,000t of asphalt laid in two layers. Originally, the contract was to be completed in four 32-hour shifts, one 106-hour shift and 21 night shifts. Due to the current situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting flight cancellations, an agreement was reached with the client that the work would be carried out in day shifts over three weeks.

In the first week, before Easter, 55,000t of asphalt were milled, loaded and deposited at a temporary storage facility inside the airport grounds over four days. Eight milling machines and 30 HGVs were used in the process. In the second week, 27,500t of asphalt were laid as a binder course in four 10-hour shifts. Approximately the same amount of temporarily stored material was transported back to the asphalt mixing plants for subsequent recycling.

One particular challenge was ensuring a continuous flow of asphalt mix of up to 1,000t/h at the paving site. To ensure compliance with all the safety requirements specified by the client, the material was transferred from HGVs outside the site to HGVs inside the site at the airport perimeter fence by means of feeders and ramps. The asphalt surface course was laid during the 17th week of the calendar year. Four feeders, four pavers and 22 rollers were used to lay approximately 25,000 tonnes of asphalt in a seamless pass over a width of approximately 30m.

Challenging logistics

Four mixing plants were used to produce the asphalt in order to achieve the high paving rates. On peak days, up to 100 HGVs were needed to transport the asphalt continuously to the construction site. Planning the asphalt transfer logistics at the perimeter fence was particularly challenging. The construction logistics tool BPO Asphalt was used for the planning, optimisation and simulation of the construction processes and the documentation.