From the Flight Deck

The electrical work is done. The drainage work is done. Now the Marshfield Municipal Airport ramp reconstruction project will be principally all about earthwork, paving, and wetlands, says Nick Prescott. Nick is the resident project representative with Airport Solutions Group, the airport’s consulting firm who designed the project.

“This week and next the contractor’s primary focus is going to be on installing and confecting sub-base material,” Nick said this week. “And hopefully we can get into some of the base material as well.”

Most of the mountains of removed soil that dominated the view from the admin/terminal building for the past few weeks has been remixed and installed or removed.

The view across the transforming ramp is quite a bit more open that it has been in recent weeks.

Contractor Lawrence Lynch Corp. is also focusing on wetlands restoration. “We’ll be working on pocket wetlands,” Nick said. “Wetlands plants are scheduled to be planted the week of the 15th, so the contractor has to have those pocket wetlands built to grade and ready for plants by then.”

This project concludes the airport-wide safety improvement project, which has seen various stages since planning began in 2002. The first phase of the safety improvement project saw the construction of a longer and wider (3,900 x 100 feet, from 3,000 x 75) runway, which allows aircraft to take off and land more safely.

The ramp reconstruction project is part of the Land Use with Higher Potential Pollutant Loads (LUHPPL) initiative, a conditional order to the runway program. It is a complete reconstruction and improvement of the main ramp area, and it is essential to ensure continued operational safety and environmental compliance, bringing the airport to current FAA standards.

“We finished up the drainage today (Tuesday),” Nick said. “That’s it for utility work, so just earthwork, paving and wetlands ahead of us. So, things are moving along.”

Excavation equipment sits still temporarily.

P154 soil is the sub-base material that provides a strong, stable base to support the layers above it, typical in airports. It will fill 22 inches of the 32-inch box that Lynch dug out. Then a layer of P209 soil will go down. That’s a crushed aggregate base course designed to go on a prepared surface and provide a stable foundation. Once that’s approved, then will come the new asphalt.

The project should be finished sometime in mid- late October.

Enhancing airport safety is a high priority for the Marshfield Airport Commission and Shoreline Aviation, which manages the airport for the town, as well as the FAA and MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division. Those agencies fund and administer a grant, respectively, financing most of the project.

Sub-base material is being installed on the airport ramp.