Below the Radar

McCarran Takes Terminal 3 Preparations Undergroun

By Tony Illia

Before crews can tackle the $1.8 billion mega-project that is McCarran Airport's future Terminal 3, a massive amount of site work must be completed, from a mountain of excavation to constructing an underground transit system.

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McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas is taxiing for construction take-off of a new $1.8-billion third terminal building, and St. Louis, Mo.-based McCarthy Building Cos. is performing $153.7 million in critical civil site improvements to prepare for it.

Work on the improvements began a year ago. The project, designed by architect PGAL of Houston, is spread across a 70-acre area along the former Russell Road, which was realigned last year northward between Paradise Road and Spencer Street to make room for the new terminal building.

The planned 1.87-million-sq-ft terminal building is expected to bid in May. PGAL is the architect. The 14-gate Terminal 3, located north of the existing D-Gates, will be self-contained with its own security checkpoints, baggage claim, retail concessions, parking and ticketing.

It will give McCarran 117 gates in total, which is its final build-out capacity.

The massive 300 ft wide and 2,300 ft long footprint requires excavation of 667,000 cu yds of dirt, including 110,000 cu yds of caliche. Photo courtesy McCarthy

“Terminal 3 will bring the added facilities and space Clark County needs to host millions of additional air travelers who visit our community as well as service our growing local population,” says Rosemary Vassiliadis, deputy director of the Clark County Department of Aviation, which oversees McCarran. “It will complement what’s already in place at McCarran, while making it easier for airlines to connect Las Vegas with many of the world’s best business and leisure travel markets.”

McCarran, the nation’s seventh busiest airport, saw a record 47.7 million passengers last year, a 3.1% increase from 2006. It handles over 126,000 passengers a day. It will become even busier in the future, with 174,000 rooms being added to Las Vegas’ hotel inventory by 2010. Every new room brings an estimated 320 more passengers through McCarran, say airport officials.

McCarthy is currently placing all the necessary foundation and infrastructure for the new terminal, says Ray Sedey, the firm’s project director. “Essentially, it will be ready for vertical steel erection once we’re done,” he adds.

McCarthy’s sitework will finish in June 2009. The Terminal 3 building will open in 2011.

Terminal 3 has a massive footprint that measures 300 ft wide and 2,300 ft long. Sitework entails 667,000 cu yds of excavation, including 110,000 cu yds of caliche, a hardened calcium carbonate soil that is difficult to remove.

Excavation turned up 32.8% more caliche than anticipated. But McCarthy has a unit-price contract enabling it to be paid for unexpected, added expenses. Frehner Construction Co., the project’s North Las Vegas-based earthwork contractor, used milling machines to break up the hard soil and crushed much of the material found onsite, reusing 350,000 cu yds as backfill.

There have been other problems. The water table is 20 to 30 ft below the surface running west to east. McCarthy has placed 60 wells throughout the site to pump out 150,000 gal of groundwater a day. The water is collected from 4.5 mi worth of 4- to 10-in. piping and stored in a 15-ft-tall, 7-ft-wide basin lined with a geotextile fabric and 60,000 cu yds of 3-in. drain rock.

The reservoir, located in the terminal’s future basement, filters and then releases water into the Las Vegas Wash where it travels back to Lake Mead. Temporary pumps are being used during construction that will be replaced with permanent ones upon project completion.

This rendering depicts McCarran’s planned Terminal 3. The 1.87 million-sq-ft, 14-gate addition is expected to bid in May. Courtesy McCarran Intl. Airport

McCarthy is also constructing a 2,300-ft-long, 15-ft-high and 15-ft-deep underground utility corridor with gas, electricity and water lines. The reinforced concrete corridor will run below the new terminal building, which will rest atop a slab and grade-beam foundation over 1,260 drilled piers up to 70 ft deep. San Francisco-based Malcolm Drilling Co. Inc. is the drilling subcontractor.

Next, McCarthy will install 350 anchor bolt assemblies with 2.5-in.-diameter bolts atop the foundation as connection points for the terminal’s future vertical steel.

Other work entails building a two-story underground Automated Train System station and associated tunnel work that will shuttle visitors between Terminal 3 and the D-Gates. The cast-in-place concrete station measures 180 ft wide, 40 ft long and 30 ft high. It’s being built with 3- to 4-ft-thick walls and 2-ft-square support columns spaced on a 20-ft grid. Walter P Moore, Houston, is the structural engineer.

The structure will be left in its raw concrete state. Finishes and architectural touches will be added under a separate, future contract. About 80 ft of the existing three-cell ATS tunnel is being demolished so that the station can be tied in. Granite Construction Co. of Watsonville, Calif., is doing the structural concrete and retaining-wall work. Its subcontract is valued at $20 million.

“It’s a complicated reinforced-concrete structure with lots of columns, structural slabs with drop beams,” says Ron Dukeshier, Granite’s project manager. “Coordinating work with all the other activities going on is a challenge.”

There will additionally be a pedestrian walkway through the center of the 80-ft-wide, 17-ft-tall tunnel, with 22 removable lids that provide an emergency exit access in case of a train malfunction. The project will use a total of 100,000 cu yds of concrete provided by Silver State Materials and Ready Mix Inc., both of Las Vegas, plus 2.6 million pounds of reinforcing steel. San Diego-based Pacific Coast Steel is the rebar provider.

The ATS station, tunnel and other underground portions are all being waterproofed. Las Vegas-based Commercial Roofers will provide 500,000 sq ft of waterproofing by applying Columbia, Md.-based W.R. Grace & Co.’s Bituthene 3000 membrane product to the concrete. It’s a self-adhesive, composite of rubberized asphalt and cross-laminated, high-density polyethylene film that creates a tough waterproof barrier. W.R. Grace’s Preprufe product will be used to maintain waterproofing integrity at the soil retention tieback heads.

“Everything underground is being waterproofed in order to prevent against premature corrosion,” says Seday. “The project is engineered to have redundant systems, which safeguards against a worse possible scenario.”

The sprawling site utilizes several retaining walls, including an 800-ft-long, 30-ft-tall, 2-ft-thick, cast-in-place structure along the east side plus two 150-ft-long, 30-ft-high walls along the future terminal’s east and west sides. Walls are cast with special form liners that create an aesthetic graphic design. G.C. Wallace Inc., Las Vegas, is the retaining-wall engineer.

The multifaceted undertaking will see 350 people during the peak of construction activity. The project schedule has 11 milestone dates that carry up to $5,000 a day in late penalties. McCarthy had completed two milestones thus far, but suffered an unexpected four-month delay from utility complications along Russell Road. The contract is not at fault.

Site logistics become more complicated as work starts to overlap with adjacent projects. Construction will begin on the terminal building while civil site upgrades take place. A central plant is being built east of the Terminal 3 footprint, and plans call for a future 6,000-space garage north of the site.

“Our staging area will shrink to just 100 ft as other projects come online, making it tougher to operate,” Seday says. “It will take coordination and communications with neighboring projects and contractors in order to ensure construction progress continues uninterrupted.”

Key Players :

Owner: Clark County Dept. of Aviation
General Contractor: McCarthy Building Cos.
Architect/Master-Planning: PGAL
Engineers: Walter P Moore; G.C. Wallace Inc.; PBS&J; The Louis Berger Group Inc.
Concrete: Granite Construction Co.
Ready Mix Suppliers: Silver State Materials; Ready Mix Inc.
Drilling: Malcolm Drilling Co.
Waterproofing: Commercial Roofers
Rebar: Pacific Coast Steel

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