Critical Airfield Infrastructure Designed to Withstand 100-Year Weather Event

Joint Base Andrews, located in Prince George’s County, MD, is the home base for Air Force One and the 11th Wing of the U.S. Air Force. Its mission is crucial for maintaining the affairs of the government and responding to national security situations. When upgrading and repairing the airfield’s lighting vault, it was imperative to ensure that this critical structure remain operational even under the most severe weather conditions.

Crawford, Murphy & Tilly (CMT) provided engineering and architectural design services to upgrade and replace the existing 6,888 square-foot airfield lighting vault serving the two-runway complex. Because the vault is such a critical component of the visual navigation system, the regulator and generator rooms of the brick structure were specially designed to withstand an F4 tornado. The structure features a pre-cast concrete roof, heavy-duty doors, and reinforced louvered ventilation openings. A back-up generator ensures that even during a base-wide outage, power will be maintained to the approach lights, runway centerline, touchdown zone and edge lights as well as taxiway lights and signs, allowing emergency operations to continue.

This project also included a new home-run duct bank, a new airfield lighting control system and demolition and removal of the previous 30-year old structure.