Connecting Flight

Raleigh-Durham’s New International Terminal Halfway Complete

By Bruce Buckley

With the 581,875-sq-ft first phase of Terminal 2 at Raleigh-Durham International Airport complete, crews are ready to embark on the second half of the $570 million project, which should be completed in early 2011.

A team led by Archer-Western Contractors of Atlanta started work in April 2006 and delivered the first half of the 890,000-sq-ft facility in Morrisville, N.C., this past August, allowing tenants to begin fit-outs in preparation for the terminal’s first flights on Oct. 26.

As its interior spaces received their final touches, the build team broke ground in October on the 368,578-sq-ft second half of the terminal.

When completed, the new terminal at RDU aims to be attractive to both passengers and air carriers.

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The existing Terminal C served for more than a decade as the Southeast hub of American Airlines, but the company sold its lease on the facility back to the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority in 2002 because it was used almost exclusively for connecting passengers to other flights and had limited ticketing, small security checkpoints and few baggage claims.

The replacement terminal will allow the airport to serve multiple carriers. The new building will feature two concourses with 32 gates, including three gates that can accommodate wide-body jets used for international flights. Three ticketing islands are located away from the walls to ease congestion in the lobby, offering 20 ticket counters.

More than 60 electronic kiosks will be located throughout the check-in area. Security checkpoints will accommodate up to 10 lanes with additional adjacent space that could be used for future expansion. Baggage claim will offer five carousels. The new terminal doubles the size of its Federal Inspection Services facility, allowing processing of up to 400 passengers per hour.

When completed, the terminal is expected to service up to 11.4 million passengers each year.

With the northern portion of the $570 million project complete, travelers are getting a taste of the design by Fentress Bradburn Architects of Denver. Inspired by the rolling Carolina piedmont, the terminal features a curved roof with continuous steel panels that are up to 400 ft long. The interior captures the spirit of Carolina craftsmanship with a mix of natural materials highlighted by its large wood-laminated trusses. While its look fits the region, delivering the design required engineering first-of-its-kind structures and sourcing materials from around the globe.

“We consider the [completed] phase to be a full-scale mock-up for the next phase,” says Tom Theobald, associate principal at Fentress Bradburn.

Phase one was built while the southern portion of the terminal remained open for business, shielded behind a temporary wall with structural steel columns that run up to 130 ft from the lower floor of the two-story structure to the roof.

“Although it’s temporary, we built the wall as if it’s part of the original building,” says Joe Thompson, senior project manager at Archer-Western.

Now that tenants have moved into the completed portion, the southern half is being demolished to make way for foundation work on the structural steel building.

As the project took shape, Archer-Western preordered much of the materials for the final phase, allowing it to lock in prices early and keep costs down. About 80% of the panels for the building’s unitized curtain-wall system, which is fabricated in China, are onsite. The steel is stored at a yard in Canada, ready to be fabricated as needed. Coils of steel used to create the roof panels have also been purchased.

Materials from five countries are used to create the truss system. Each truss uses wood from British Columbia and steel from Montreal. The steel cables are manufactured in the United Kingdom, spun in Germany and use fittings made in China.

“That’s the biggest factor for this phase,” Thompson says. “We’ve preordered a tremendous amount of materials to reduce the owner’s cost. We locked contractors in early and got them to procure early on.”

With much of the materials in hand, the team can focus on speeding delivery. In the first phase, a big hurdle was the project’s innovative trusses. The truss system features 117 beams that span 164 ft from end to end and range from 36 to 54 in. deep. It was the first time the system had been used to create such large trusses.

The first trusses took nine days to build because crews had to learn the process. By the end, they could assemble at least one truss per day.

Thompson says the team is aiming to complete two per day during the final phase.

As before, trusses will be assembled on two large beds. Once the trusses are completed, they are rotated and picked by a crane. The trusses are placed with the ends sitting in a steel fork and connected with steel pin connectors.

Phase one was the first use of those connectors on a major U.S. commercial project. There is only 1 in. of tolerance in either direction on each truss.

Although the look of the new phase will match the completed portion, it will provide the terminal its signature grand entrance. Like the mast of a ship, a plate steel pole will angle out from the building, using a cantilever system that allows the pole to extend over the neighboring roadway without using columns.

The roof fans out like a sail from the upper tip of the pole back to the building. Once completed, the sail will cover a walkway that extends from the parking garage to the terminal.

Because the mast crosses a roadway, work will have to be completed during off-hours—10 p.m. to 5 a.m. To match the truss design, heavy 5-in.-diameter cables have been specified to support the cantilever structure.

The swooping mast will flow into the rolling design of the roof, which is covered with curved stainless steel panels. Each 16-in.-wide continuous panel extends from 180 ft to 400 ft long. The shorter panels are turned on their sides and run through a curving machine. The longer panels follow the more gradual lines of the roof, allowing the weight of each panel to create the curve instead of using a machine.

Each panel is walked up and down the hills of the roof by workers spaced approximately 6 ft apart, requiring more than 50 people to place the longest panels.

As with the first phase, the new terminal portion will feature baggage claim areas on the lower level with ticketing above. Rather than linear rows of ticketing counters, the new terminal features modular islands that are placed away from the walls to give the space a more open feel, Theobald says.

Baggage from the ticketing islands is dropped through the floors onto conveyors.

The two levels will be connected by a set of escalators through the center of the space. Portions of that space are already evident in the recently opened phase and will be complete with deliver of the final phase.

Dave Powell, the airport’s director of the major capital improvements program, says some big steps are still ahead. The two phases will be tied together, merging systems and creating a continuous open terminal space once the temporary wall is removed.

“With the next phase, the challenge is merging things like the structures, the HVAC systems and the baggage-handling system and making them all come together so it looks like one building,” Powell says. “We’ve not had much impact on airport operations so far. It becomes more visible on this next phase. We want to be as low key as we can.”

Key Facts:

Location: Morrisville, N.C.
Contractor: Archer-Western Contractors, Atlanta
Owner: Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority
Architect: Fentress Bradburn Architects, Denver
Start Date: April 2006 (phase one); October 2008 (final phase)
Completion Date: August 2008 (phase one); early 2011 (final phase)