About the Project

The Houston Airport System (HAS) selected APTech, working as a subcontractor, to complete several comprehensive pavement condition assessments as part of its asset management strategy to maintain its pavement infrastructure. APTech was chosen for this work due to our experience performing the airport pavement management system (APMS) update in 2014. This project involved concurrent efforts at three airports maintained by HAS (Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston William P. Hobby Airport, and Ellington Field) and required APTech to manage large volumes of accurate data and integrate them into the HAS PAVER databases.

This project entailed leading APMS updates at all three HAS airports. To begin, APTech performed a records review while updating the pavement inventory and network definition. APTech then collected pavement condition data by georeferencing each distress on runways, taxiways, and select aprons using tablet computers paired with GPS units. APTech staff filtered the collected distress data according to the ASTM D5340-20 PCI methodology prior to uploading into the PAVER database for each airport. APTech also performed FWD testing and analysis to assess structural integrity of the pavements and provided a runway grooving assessment. As part of this work, APTech also developed a capital improvement plan (CIP) and an infrastructure condition assessment using metrics established by HAS. APTech concluded this project by developing a final project report and providing HAS employees with PAVER training.

Because of APTech’s work, the HAS staff can now make asset management decisions across their pavement networks using geo-referenced data down to an individual slab-level. The collected information allowed HAS to easily retrieve the physical condition, remaining service life, and operational impact of each pavement asset throughout their airfield networks. Additionally, by geo-referencing each distress the maintenance work plans are based on actual locations and dimensions of work quantities. Due to HAS’ satisfaction with this project, APTech was recently awarded another contract as a subconsultant to incorporate the remaining aprons and shoulder pavements into their pavement management system.