Airport project moving swiftly despite bad weather

Despite the recent adverse weather conditions, construction work at the Argyle international airport is moving along swiftly in order to meet the completion date of the end of 2014.{{more}}

While giving updates, during a tour of the site by members of Cabinet last Thursday, Alfredo Garcia, head of pavement and earthworks, hinted that adverse weather conditions sometimes limit the amount of work that can be done.

“It’s a pity that we are not actually pouring concrete today because of the climatic conditions; we couldn’t pour any concrete today,” he told persons present.

“We’re working towards finishing all the concrete works in the commercial platform by the end of November, beginning of December. At present, we have two teams working and their plan is to do 30 slabs per day within a 20-day period in a month.”

According to Garcia, at the end of July, which was the month when they actually had more continuous days of placing concrete, they had already placed 2,576 cubic metres of concrete which is equal to 367 slabs.

Dr Rudy Matthias, the chief executive officer of the International Airport Development Company (IADC) also noted that despite the weather conditions, work on the airport has been moving along promptly.

“Barring extreme adverse weather conditions…we are substantially advanced on the runway. It is prepared now to a level where we need to start applying the base material, but the engineers have advised that we perhaps shouldn’t apply the base material, given the rainy conditions, just until we are ready to start paving the runway – that is applying the asphalt layer.

“So, what you see out there is essentially almost now ready to receive the base material and to receive the final asphalt that we are going to put on the runway. The concrete work has started. We started around the first of July and we’ve started in the apron area and the works are progressing fairly well, considering the adverse weather conditions that we’ve had in July.”(BK)