With over 250,000 operations on a yearly basis, the Grand Forks International Airport ranks as one the top 50 busiest airports in the country. When it was time to rehabilitate their primary runway Ulteig was chosen to provide the engineering services. The primary runway 17R/35L is 7950' x 150' bituminous pavement runway with a porous friction course. The porous friction course was failing and the runway was showing signs of distress with large transverse and longitudinal cracking.

The challenge was how to not impact operations adversely. Through meetings with the owner and stakeholders on the airport a solution was found. First, all commercial service and cargo operations were moved to the Grand Forks Air Force Base which was located five miles from the airport. This involved busing passenger to and from the base and very close coordination with Air Force officials. Secondly, a time was set for construction when the University of North Dakota School Aerospace was on a break and flight training operations were at a minimum. Finally, a construction schedule of 21 calendar days was set in the contract documents with a bonus, paid by the Airport Authority, set for each day the contractor finished before the 21 days.

The project consisted of: mill and overlay of six inches of polymer modified bituminous pavement, reestablishing vertical and cross-slope grading, all new runway edge lighting, PAPI's, a land and hold short lighting system, three connecting taxiways, grooving and marking.

The project was completed three days early and was an Engineering Excellence Award winner by the North Dakota Council of Engineering Companies.