Of all the assets at airports, airfield pavements are amongst the most critical.

With pavements dating back to the 1930s and 1940s, a pavement asset management plan is imperative to manage complex and costly ongoing maintenance at Essendon Fields Airport.

Essendon Fields is investing several million dollars into this safety-critical plan, ensuring our runways, taxiways and aprons remain in a sound condition to support operation well into the future.

TERMINAL APRON CRACK SEALING PROJECT

The Airport comprises almost 60,000 lineal metres of concrete joints across the airfield, and sealing those joints is an important part of keeping the pavement subgrade free of water, which overtime can lead to pavement fault.

In late 2022 over 8,400 lineal metres of joints were resealed on the Essendon Fields Airport Terminal Apron, an investment of a quarter of a million dollars. Airport Operations Manager John Nahyna explains more about this process via the video below.

RUNWAY 17/35 PAVEMENT SURFACE TREATMENT

Another important part of the wider pavement asset management plan is a surface enrichment and rejuvenation treatment to the existing north-south runway, to be carried out in March 2023. In order to deliver these works, temporary runway closures will be carefully managed, with work occurring over three stages.

You can find more about Runway 17/35 project works here.

Throughout these projects, Essendon Fields has worked closely with regulators and industry to ensure impacts on operations have been considered, and works are carried out in a safe and timely manner.

We thank all aviation customers for their cooperation as we deliver the Pavement Asset Management Plan, which continues to provide a safe and viable Airport for our community.