Common Airport Pavement Maintenance Practices
Every once in a while, in every airport, airport operators are required to fit pavement maintenance operations into the budget, seeing as a smooth pavement is vital for efficiency. First, the operator identifies the needs for preservation or improvement that an airport pavement may need so as to make a decision on the best time to make the improvements. After that, the operator goes on to determine the kind of maintenance and rehabilitation engineering specifics the pavement that has been identified will require. Hajek argues that the first stage is considered more important, seeing as unlike deciding which methods of maintenance and rehabilitation to use, airport authorities always face the challenge of ruling out whether or not the identified pavement indeed requires some improvement.
Airport pavement maintenance also requires ample funding, which happens after the airport authorities have confirmed through a thorough process that the selected pavements are the right ones. The most used treatment and rehabilitation methods are asphalt concrete as well as Portland cement concrete, and seeing as to an extent they are useful in achieving a common goal, which is ensuring pavements are preserved and maintained, they are often used together.
The purpose of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation is so that it is prevented from deteriorating. According to Hajek, for airport authorities to prioritize preservation and restoration, the specific project has to be up to par with the services that are needed in satisfying the pavement improvement requirements. This is so that as they budget for it, they also account for other operations in the airfield that are connected or dependent on the pavement such as, for instance, in-pavement lighting and other utilities that are based underground. These decisions also factor in the availability of funds for the project and in good time, and among that, they consider the impacts the project may have on the overall operations of the airport, as well as the safety of everyone during the time construction takes place.