Contrack Watts Helps Deliver First of 8 New Hangars Planned at Tinker Air Force Base
Tinker Air Force Base celebrated on October 18 the opening of a new KC-46A Pegasus maintenance depot. Contrack Watts supported the delivery of the single-bay hangar by completing enabling infrastructure work in June 2019.
This is the first of eight new hangars planned for Tinker Air Force Base’s new 156-acre maintenance campus that will be built in phases through 2027. Upon completion, the campus will provide ramp infrastructure, software innovation labs and engine test facilities.
Contrack Watts was the first contractor in the campus, partnering with Garney Construction in a joint venture to construct all underground utilities and airfield pavement needed for the hangars.
The Contrack Watts-Garney joint venture had a scope of work that included demolishing, clearing and grubbing the entire complex site, utility demolition and removing and crushing of the existing railroad ballast from the campus. New construction work included earthwork, wet and dry utilities, lime treatment of soils and a perimeter road with a bridge and mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. The project also included granular base rock and asphalt drainage layer for an aircraft parking concrete apron and taxiway with a 25-foot wide asphalt shoulder and 168-vehicle parking lot.
CWG worked over 155,000 man-hours on the project with no lost time or recordable injuries.
At 55,000 square feet, the hangar is the single-largest construction project at the military base in Oklahoma since the 1940s. The maintenance facility will primarily serve as a repair shop for crews to perform work on the 179 KC-46A aircrafts the Air Force is purchasing over the next nine years to replace its aging fleet of KC-135 stratotankers.
Watch KFOR-TV’s coverage of the ribbon cutting ceremony to gain more background on the master plan for the base and the KC-46A Pegasus aircraft.