Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Tech students inspect airports

Argen Duncan El Defensor Chieftain Reporter

New Mexico Tech students are paving the way to better airport runways, taxiways and aprons around the state.

The students have been inspecting airport pavements for real-world records, and getting real-world experience, since last fall. Tech contracted with the state Department of Transportation to inspect the paved areas of 48 airports around the state, not including the Albuquerque International Sunport or unpaved airports.

The resulting evaluations of pavement conditions will help the department prioritize its maintenance and repair work and funding requests to the Federal Aviation Administration, said project principal investigator and Tech Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering Mark P. Cal. Aviation Division Director Thomas Baca said the collected data would eventually be available to the public online.

Students and participating faculty finished the last initial inspections this summer. The students are entering airport pavement information into a database and preparing a report.

Periodic inspections are to continue on a rotating basis.

"The benefit of the project is students are going to be trained, they're going to have practical knowledge, they're going to be more valuable to employers," Cal said.

Baca said the inspections have been needed for years, but his division never had the staff.

"We needed to get it done," Baca said.

The Federal Aviation Administration wanted airport pavement catalogued.

Tracy Baker, a student on the project, said the goal was to get consistent inspections done at the same time.

Baca started negotiations about a year ago, when he had extra money, and received a legislative appropriation in March. Baca said the contract with Tech lasts four years, but he expects to maintain the arrangement for a long time.

Baca said the inspections are very important for prioritizing repair and refurbishment projects.

"And we've never been able to have a look at the whole state in one piece of software, but now we can, so it's a big help to us," he said of the database.

Baca said Tech faculty and students have done well.

"They are responsive; they are accurate; they've done everything they said they were going to do, and a little more," he said.

Baker and fellow civil engineering students Bryan Mitchell, Phil Heid, Tess McCarty-Glenn and Alexis Martinez inspected airports in "every corner of the state," Cal said.

Students worked during weekends and school breaks for an hourly wage, and the transportation department paid expenses. Cal said he and Paul McMullin came with the students to inspect the first 12 airports and about every third airport afterwards.

Baker, a senior, said engineers the state hired worked with the group the beginning.

Baker said the group had some old information about the airports and more recent aerial photographs. Before the inspections, they tried to get plans from the facility's engineering consulting firms and asked the airport managers about recent changes.

The students and any helpers walked over the entire pavement and closely inspected about 10 percent of it to classify and rate the severity of the different types of stress, Baker continued.

"We're out there rain or shine," she said.

After getting the data, the students corrected their maps and put the information into computer software that produced a numerical rating of the pavement condition.

Cal said the more pavement deteriorates, the more repairs cost.

"The whole ideas is, you want to rehabilitate a pavement before it's too costly to do so," Cal said.

Also, once the databases and reports are finished, anyone planning to fly into the state can see airport layout and conditions with a Department of Transportation Web site, Cal said.

Baker became involved largely because she felt airports are the fastest, more efficient way to get people in remote areas to emergency care. She also thought "with our crumpling highway system," knowledge of assessing pavement and related software would be valuable.

aduncan@dchieftain.com

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