SPECIAL REPORT: SUSTAINABILITY
Image courtesy of the City of Chicago.
modernisation has been one of the ‘greenest’ mega construction projects ever undertaken. During the construction of the FAA Control Tower, which was
designed by AECOM and delivered by Walsh Construction Company, some 40% of materials were sourced from local materials and 5% from recycled building material, while 90% of waste was diverted from being dumped in landfills. Several relocated or newly constructed buildings at O’Hare,
including the ATC tower and FedEx cargo centre have been equipped with vegetated ‘green’ roofs, capable of reducing the ‘heat island’ effect generated by O’Hare’s facilities. O’Hare has 10 structures with green roof space, totalling more than
229,000 square feet (the largest amount of airport green roof space in the US), with an additional 162,000 square feet of vegetated green roof area in the design stage. Like any US airport seeking to complete a new construction project,
Chicago O’Hare was required to complete various impact studies, not least being the FAA’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and, thanks partially to the SDM, O’Hare passed with flying colours. “It helped with the FAA’s regulatory process and went above
and beyond what the Federal government wanted, so we were greener than the US government! This made the process smoother because they knew the airport had a strong sustainable commitment, but also made the City of Chicago a leader in sustainable projects,” enthuses Andolino. Crawford, Murphy & Tilly (CMT) worked closely with the FAA to ensure
compliance on numerous other standards, including National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) related projects at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
The OMP’s tough standards also included a construction waste
management specification requiring a minimum of 50% of all construction and demolition debris to be recycled. In 2009, Chicago featured its new sustainability manual at AAAE’s
Airports Going Green conference, hosted by the city – and this was not the only result of Chicago’s sustainability ethos explains Andolino. “Runway 10/28 was finished 56 days and $33 million under
budget and with the completion of all projects by 2014 we are predicting that O’ Hare will operate an extra 300,000 flights a year, that’s the equivalent of placing another Midway on top of O’Hare,” explains Andolino. This year the second and final part of the OMP will get underway,
heralding the extension of Runway 9R-27L, the relocation of its threshold and the building of two new runways (9C-27C and 10R-28L) to complete O’Hare’s parallel runway system. To fund this final stage, O’Hare raised $1.17 billion in May 2010 from
Build America bonds while also securing $410 million from the FAA for this and other adjoining projects – by doing so Daley will honour a pledge that no tax payer money be spent on the OMP. “We are working aggressively to complete the project by 2014, some
issues still need to be resolved, such as moving the St Johannes Cemetery, which is still in litigation, but the construction of the new runway has begun at both ends and progress is still being made to reduce delays,” she explains. Meanwhile Andolino explains that the 79% capacity increase is a figure
related entirely to efficiencies from infrastructure and more can be expected as NextGen technologies, such as Area Navigation (RNAV) and Required Navigation Performance (RNP), come online. As Chicago O’Hare prepares to begin the completion phase of the OMP
project, it will be with the knowledge that from crisis the airport has emerged as a leading light of sustainable development.
AIRPORT WORLD/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2010 AW 31
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