Additionally, the structure’s precast concrete exterior envelope ensures a minimum 50-year service life, while a brick facade and glass curtain wall system preserve the base’s historic aesthetic and add natural lighting.

Designed to optimize aircraft performance and protect advanced avionics, the hangar features specialized air systems for precise temperature regulation. The HVAC system incorporates an air-cooled chiller plant, high-efficiency condensing boilers and ductless split systems for telecommunications rooms.

Photo courtesy Walsh Federal

Each of the aircraft spaces has a pre-conditioned air system, ensuring climate control per military guidelines. Additionally, an advanced underwing fire suppression system is engineered to rapidly extinguish fuel fires while meeting strict life safety and force protection standards.

Other significant infrastructure upgrades included revamping the taxiways, renovating the aircraft apron, enhancing electrical grounding and installing sunshades.

Delivering the complex facility on an accelerated schedule required addressing site issues such as subsurface fuel lines and remnants of a demolished hangar. To reduce costs, the team revised the foundation design to span the buried pile caps.

Other challenges included optimizing wash rack and fire lane placement to support future expansion while maintaining operational efficiency. The project team also incorporated low-impact development strategies,

such as adjusting impervious surfaces to successfully reduce stormwater runoff.

Photo courtesy Walsh Federal

To prevent aquifer contamination from contaminated soils, the project team modified the deep foundation design, shortening pile lengths to mitigate groundwater impact beyond the original scope.

Worker safety was a major focus. Walsh Federal’s health, safety and environmental program focuses on “eliminating incidents, minimizing risk and maintaining a safe work environment for its employees and the public,” according to the project entry.

An overarching tenet of the safety program is that “every employee plays a vital role in safety, [but] it is management’s duty to ensure work practices are effective and enforced.” A key initiative in this effort was Walsh’s Craft Leadership in Safety (CLS) program, which empowers tradespeople to shape workplace safety.

Utilizing this program and others, the project’s safety program—spanning activities both inside the complex hangar and adjacent to an active airfield—resulted in nearly 600,000 work hours with no injuries or recordable incidents.