It’s the start of the holiday season. Malls are playing Christmas music and shoppers are already tackling their lists. Soon, the airports will be packed with people traveling to their holiday destinations. This year, traveling to and from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport will be a little smoother thanks to Slusser Brothers paving crews. Slusser Brothers of Hazleton, Pa., recently completed work on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, including resurfacing the main runway.
“It will be a more pleasant experience for everyone involved to use a smoother runway,” said Andy Nowak, Vice President of Construction at Slusser Brothers. “The completely new paved runway surface will provide years of continuous service to the users of the airport, improving the quality and safety of the runway”
With the Federal Aviation Administration overseeing the project, strict guidelines were imposed on the quality of the paving, including the mix design, compaction and smoothness. Slusser Brothers achieved 100 percent compliance with the criteria.
The project was constructed in six separate phases of work and included over 7,500 foot runway reconstruction using over 27,000 tons of a special FAA-approved asphalt paving mix. The biggest challenge on this job was the time requirements. Because the airport required the runways to be re-opened every morning, Slusser’s crews worked through the night from 11:30 p.m. until 5:30 a.m., and avoided any delays to airline traffic.
In addition, the repaving of the main portion of the runway originally included a complete shut-down of the airport for seven days. Due to Slusser’s hardworking crews, they were able to complete this phase three days ahead of schedule, allowing the airport to re-open earlier than anticipated.
“This is a testament of a company bringing all its employees together for a single purpose,” said Patrick Bartorillo, Vice President and General Manager of Slusser Brothers. “This shut-down was critical to our customer so our team pre-planned, scheduled and put every department working toward that end. All necessary supplies were on site, equipment pre-staged and the raw materials for the asphalt pavement were stockpiled – we even had backup plans in the event everything didn’t go as planned so we could still meet our customer’s needs.”