Project Overview
Akutan is a remote Aleutian Islands community approximately 40 miles northeast of Unalaska, Alaska. Trident Seafoods operates North America’s largest seafood processing plant just west of the city across the Akun Strait. Prior to 2012, the only means of transportation into and out of Akutan were amphibious aircraft, boats, and helicopters.
PND provided multidisciplinary engineering and construction inspection services for the award-winning Akutan Airport on nearby Akun Island, opening a new gateway to Akutan and the surrounding fish processing facilities with an approximately 1-mile-long runway, hangar, hovercraft facilities, and gravel access road at the remote site surrounded by steep terrain. PND completed the design-build project for the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities within an aggressive two-year design and construction timeline, an unprecedented achievement for a Federal Aviation Administration airport.
Our Role
- Civil Engineering: designed a paved runway, paved taxiway, gravel road, and hovercraft landing ramp for the award-winning Akutan Airport
- Structural Engineering: designed an operations and maintenance building, hovercraft storage and maintenance building, and housing facility for workers and passengers
- Geotechnical Engineering: provided geotechnical investigation and analysis for 40-foot embankments over compressible soils, including field testing (62 test pits, vane shears, peat probing, in-situ densities), consolidation modeling, and slope stability with seismic and thermal analysis. PND delivered geotechnical data and design reports with recommendations for foundations, pavement, surcharge, frost heave, geosynthetics, and settlement monitoring.
- Land Surveying: performed extensive topographical survey on difficult terrain in a remote area that required significant planning and preparation
Airport Design for a Challenging Project Site
The remote location, steep terrain, poor soil conditions, and its proximity to wetlands, fish habitat, and other sensitive environments made the Akutan Airport project both physically and logistically complex. PND worked closely with regulatory agencies to develop environmentally responsible solutions tailored to the unique site.
PND’s design featured a 4,500-foot-long paved runway capable of supporting commercial aircraft operations, a paved taxiway, an operations and maintenance building, an 80-foot by 120-foot hovercraft storage and maintenance building, and a large housing facility for workers and passengers. The project also included a two-lane gravel access road connecting the shoreline to the aircraft apron, as well as shoreline facilities such as a large hovercraft landing ramp and apron for passenger transport between Akutan and the airport.
PND significantly reduced project quantities and improved the runway approaches through an innovative alignment recommendation. PND’s work on the Akutan Airport project was completed on time and within budget under challenging conditions and a tight timeframe, earning both an Award of Merit & Safety from Engineering News-Record and a Design-Build Honor Award from the Design-Build Institute of America.
Feet
of paved runway
Years
accelerated design and construction timeline
