Over the past ten years, SAAN has provided bidding assistance services to more than five international construction firms on more than ten runway-strengthening projects. Recently this included runway strengthening work at Kamembre Airport in Rwanda and at Shah Amanat International Airport in Bangladesh.

Runway strengthening is very specialized construction work. It is more than just re-surfacing, but normally a complete rehabilitation and modernization of the runway system including run-off area, electrical and lighting device embed, and much more.

Typically, runway strengthening work also includes new pavement for connecting access to taxiways and aprons. Many times this work is not accurately shown on plans. To fully understand the depth of the work scope, we start by studying geotechnical information from the design documents and looking for items that are missing or mismatched. Normally, the design documents are developed using readily available information, but they are not verified for final construction documentation.

Another good practice for successful bidding is to fully investigate the conditions of existing pavement, including pavement coring for electrical and plumbing devices. We would fill out pavement condition checklists and perform cross-checks on pictures and construction documents. It is always beneficial to include detailed worksheets as supplements in the bid. To us, bidding is an extension of the design phase.