DFW International Airport

DFW Airport, Texas

This project was set up by DFW Airport Planning Department to revitalize Terminals A, B, C, and E along with the entry ramps, parking garages and International Parkway. The project team consisted of 32 engineering and architectural firms. Gorrondona & Associates, Inc. (G&AI) was the only firm providing surveying services on the team.

Due to the the magnitude of the project, the variety of services, and the accelerated schedule and drop dead delivery date, G&AI had to be innovative in our approach to this project or the design team would fail. The surveying services included mapping sites that were to be demolished. Knowing this, G&AI mapped the major components of the structures to provide the design team with the elements that would tie into the new structures and at the same time allow the contractors to feel secure about developing costs for the demo package. Some of the services required working in the Airport’s Air Operations Area (AOA), bridges, entrance and exit ramps, passenger arrival and departure zones and within the main lanes of International Parkway. With limited time frames to complete the work safely in both these areas, G&AI utilized terrestrial laser scanning and reflectorless total stations to increase our efficiency and complete tasks on schedule and without interrupting Airport activities. The terrestrial laser scanning was especially useful to map the bridge overpasses and ramps crossing International Parkway. The heavy traffic flow and narrow lanes prohibited the application of conventional survey methodology. By utilizing our laser scanning equipment, G&AI mapped these areas safely and with no disruption to traffic entering and exiting the Airport terminals. Our reflectorless total stations also proved to be a valuable resource for mapping the super structures of the bridges and ramps and obtaining low chord elevations on the bridge beams. G&AI would have otherwise had to utilize scissor lifts to reach the high elevations of the bridge decking. That would have put us in an unsafe environment and would have required traffic control and lane closures on International Parkway, not to mention added direct expenses to our fee and delays to the project schedule. G&AI took time to discuss each surveying task with the design team to maximize our efforts. In some cases, the design team only needed planimetrics for their schematic design and did not require topographic information. This proved to be a major time savings that came from early communications with the design team. Another innovative solution to the tight schedule was discussing the operation hours with the managers of different services at the Airport. When we found trends in time-frames where there was peak pedestrian and vehicular traffic and when they were at their slowest, G&AI adjusted our surveying efforts to match those trends to be more efficient in our operations and not disrupt Airport services. G&AI surveying services included mapping International Parkway and all the frontage roads, bridges and ramps; mapping all the existing features of the abandoned airport people mover (APM), bridges and ramps; mapping the access roads, ramps and connectors to Terminals A, B, C and E; mapping the lower level driveways, ramps, structures, utilities, baggage kiosks, and the facades of the parking garages and terminal walls for Terminals A, B, C and E. G&AI also mapped the roadways, parking lots, canopies, APM facilities and utilities for the design of expansions to the North Express Parking. G&AI furnished MicroStation drawing files, digital terrain models DTM with planimetrics and applicable 1-foot contour lines, ASCII point files with point numbers, x,y,z coordinates, codes and descriptors, field sketches, photographs and control point recovery sheets for the design of utilities, structures and new terminal connectors.