In early 2021, Walsh Construction and joint venture partner Aberici Constructors completed a 130,000-square-foot two-bay maintenance hangar at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. The hangar was designed by Burns & McDowell to support the Boeing KC-46A Pegasus aircraft with a reliable refueling hub to serve all United States, allied, and coalition military aerial.
The complex includes six ceiling-mounted telescoping platforms housing connections for compressed air, breathing air, vacuum, and electrical connections that allow technicians to perform maintenance requirements including repainting operations. These platforms provide access to the airplane from nose to tail and travel vertically with rotating capabilities as well as grant the technician safe access to any area of the airplane that may need maintenance repair.
Other major components of this project included a separate mechanical building, restrooms, locker rooms that double as an emergency storm shelter, office space, training, and administrative rooms. Housing a KC-46A Pegasus refueling airplane required the building’s separation barriers be rated to stop the passage of smoke and flame. Additionally, the number of services needed for operations required several thousand openings in those barriers to protect against the spread of smoke and flame.
Braun Intertec provided life safety consulting as well as fire-resistive joint and firestop special inspection per the International Building Code and project specification requirements. All installed firestop applications were inspected, and the appropriate quantities were destructively tested to verify installation compliance. Along with following the American Society for Testing and Materials standard driven inspection requirements, the Braun Intertec Building and Structure Sciences team identified several thousand applications, confirmed they were in compliance, and catalogued each application’s location in a matrix and redline drawing set throughout the project.
With a coordinated effort, Braun Intertec met the client’s project needs and provided reliable inspection and comprehensive reporting for each firestop application to the design-build team. These measures confirmed the hangar and its complex components met updated building code requirements. Furthermore, quality control and assurance from our experts streamlined completion of this phase for the client.
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