From the Flight Deck

You can almost hear the clock ticking down.

Friday, Oct. 24, looks like a pretty safe bet as the completion date of Marshfield Municipal Airport’s long-running safety improvement project. The ongoing ramp reconstruction phase should wrap up in a couple of weeks, and what a difference that will make!

The wet forecast for next week could put a damper on that schedule, however – to be seen.

“We’re getting really close to the end,” Nick Prescott said Tuesday. Nick is the resident project representative with Airport Solutions Group, the airport’s consulting firm who designed the project. “We’ve got one more lift of asphalt to do; that will be Thursday and Friday this week. Then, pending weather, we’ll do tie down installations, and the electricians will be back to pull cable and install the apron outlets.”

The first asphalt lift, or layer, was applied to the second, finish section of compacted support base material. P-209 material is a crushed aggregate course designed to go over a surface of P-154, the sub-base material that provides a strong, stable base typical in airports. P-154 fills 22 inches of the 32-inch box of material that contractor Lawrence Lynch Corp. removed.

Heavy equipment tires marks will soon be a thing of the past.

The smooth ramp was free this week of cracks and fills for the first time in years. (The ramp – AKA apron – is the area of asphalt between the terminal/admin building, the maintenance and jet hangars, and Taxiway Alpha, which parallels the runway.) The scene was eerily silent early this week, as the rumbling heavy equipment that has been the norm these past several weeks was absent. Several raised covers of the ramp drainage system were the only obvious signs of work yet to do.

“The covers showing are the drainage structures,” Nick explained. “For the base lift of asphalt, we had to pave over our structures. They (Lynch) cut the asphalt, dig down to the top of the structure, build it up to grade with brick, and then put their frames and covers on. So, when the paving crew comes in Thursday, Friday, they can pave right up to the tops of the covers.”

It’s an unusually quiet day on Marshfield Airport’s ramp.

Lynch will also put down the second coat of asphalt on the airport access road, which enters the grounds from Gate 1 coming in on Old Colony Lane. The access road leads to the airport’s fuel farm, hangars, and the east ramp area that was redone initially as part of this project phase.

Once the second lift of asphalt is laid, it’ll all come down to the smaller details.

“They’ll be doing some seeding, sealcoating, site cleanup, doing markings, and making their way out of the site,” Nick said. “That’s it!”

The first layer of asphalt is nice and smooth.

The safety improvement project began as a gleam in planners’ eyes 23 years ago. It resulted in a runway expansion in 2014, growing the runway from 3,000 feet long to 3,900 feet (and from 75 feet wide to 100 feet), which allows aircraft to take off and land more safely.

The project is culminating in the ramp’s reconstruction, 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.

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.

Editor’s note: The following photos and video were added after initial publication to depict the last day of paving, on Friday, Oct. 10. 

The last day of paving was Friday, Oct. 10.

The last day of paving was Friday, Oct. 10.

The new look, as ramp paving work wraps up.

Lettering “MARSHFIELD” on the East Ramp.

Paving the main ramp at Marshfield Airport is almost complete.