4月24日，船员在埃灵顿机场（Ellington Airport）的1,240万美元的空中交通管制塔上破土动工，该塔将取代该机场现有的塔楼，该塔最初建于1955年，并于2008年飓风ike期间损坏。新塔将增强当前服务，并为未来的休斯顿太空港口运营提供任务控制支持。

“The main driver for the project is to provide flexibility in the infrastructure development so as to be compatible for future users whether it be the city, National Guard, FAA, NASA or private spaceport entities,” explains Frank Wengler with AECOM. “Incorporation of FAA standards and best practices in a non-FAA air traffic control tower were the main challenges in the design, while balancing against goals to minimize project costs. Designing for multiple agencies provided a challenge for designers to provide separate, secured, areas for electronics equipment.”

Clark Construction Group is general contractor on the project and AECOM is architect of record.

“这是一种传统的设计竞标方法，可用于交付塔楼，这是因为它是联邦政府可偿还的合同，”休斯顿机场系统设计助理总监Devon Tiner解释说。“我们拥有310万美元的FAA AIP（国防经济调整援助）赠款，用于帮助该项目。”其余的930万美元来自休斯顿机场系统机场改善基金。在联邦要求中，DBE目标为22％。

The project is also eligible for $2 million in grant funding through the FAA Airport Improvement Program, approval of which is pending.

Tiner指出，与埃灵顿（Ellington）其他项目相比，该项目的唯一区别是赠款。他说：“实际上，我们通过新的大陆终端重建计划以及我们正在做的其他一些项目进行了许多替代交付方法，但他们没有得到资助。”新利18备用网址

The tower will reach 143 ft, which is almost twice as tall as the existing tower, and will utilize new features such as an automated weather observation system, which can determine cloud heights, temperature, rainfall amounts, the presence of lightning in the area and other conditions.

"Since this new tower will be constructed while the old tower is still in use, extra attention was necessary to ensure a smooth transition from the existing tower to the new tower. It was not necessarily a straight forward design," adds Aaron Boyce, construction admin manager at AECOM. "Since the new tower has a small footprint, an extended plenum was provided at two locations for telecom cabling."

Teams also designed the control tower to provide expansion space for future Spaceport operations, such as sizing the cab of the control tower to allow for a future control position dedicated to spaceport operations.

“如果SpacePort行动需要额外的建筑空间，则第二个进入控制塔的入口将可以通过单独的SpacePort Administration大楼的链接容纳访问，” Wengler说。“这种计划方法允许塔楼尺寸满足当前需求，同时允许扩展以适应未来的增长。”

艾灵顿宇航中心发展进步,in the meantime, with phase one—a 90 acre development—in design right now, Tiner says.

“We’re going to generate a set of 60% bridging documents, utilities and roadway infrastructure, and hopefully we’ll have that out on the street here for advertisement for a design-build contractor to come in and finish the plans and deliver the infrastructure for phase one space port delivery by third quarter of 2018,” he says. “We’re actually working with some interesting developers, so we’re just on the verge of being able to make an announcement, but it just hasn’t happened.”

埃灵顿’s existing tower will remain operational until the new tower is completed by the end of 2018.