3D paving in the land of fire, ice

Renewing a busy airport
Despite additions and expansions in recent years, the terminal is struggling to handle the large number of passengers. A master plan for Keflavík Airport has been approved that envisions the airport be expanded to handle as many as 25 million passengers annually in 2040, four times more than the 6.2 million passengers that have travelled through the airport in 2016.

ÍAV and the asphalt company Hlaðbær-Colas hf. signed a contract in April 2016 where Hlaðbær-Colas hf. is responsible for milling and paving two extended runways. These will be constructed in two phases, the first in 2016 and the second in 2017, in order not to interrupt the air traffic.

Leica PaveSmart 3D solution has been used both for the asphalt milling on a Wirtgen Milling Machine W200i and the asphalt paving on a Vögele Super 2100-3 Navitron Paver.

The requirements of the project have been set very high by the contractor.

The required 3 mm smoothness can be very hard to achieve without the 3D machine control solution on air fields. Thanks to the Leica PaveSmart 3D solution, which eliminated the stake out measurement in front of the milling machine, the machine works faster with less stops, which results in higher accuracy, better smoothness and optimised speed.

Jan Hansen from JH ehf, the local Leica Geosystems representative in Iceland, explains:
“When the project is finished, a total of 105,000 tons of new asphalt will have been used and the old asphalt has been recycled for the taxiways and shoulders in the airport. The Keflavík Airport will then be much better suited to handle the tourist boom.”

Chief Surveyor on the project Úlfar Kristinsson, who works for the construction and engineering company VSB Verkfræðistofa ehf. that designed the runways, explained the harsh Ice-landic weather and tourism boom brought on the critical need for the airport update. Using the PaveSmart 3D, he and his team have experienced:

• Increased time savings
• More productivity
• Decreased budget overage

“It is a great advantage for us that we can use the same system on both machines,” says Auðunn Pálsson from Hlaðbær-Colas hf. “We only need to train the operators in one solution because 95 per cent of the steps are identical for both the milling and the paving application. It is also an advantage that we only have to deal with just one company.”

Story: 3D paving in the land of fire, ice
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Renewing a busy airport
Chapter 3: Taking on the great outdoors