IMG 4121

John Wayne Airport Development Program

Location Costa Mesa, California

Client John Wayne Airport

Services Estimating & Cost Management, Program Management, Project Management

Project Value $1 Billion

Hill delivered comprehensive on-call program management services for John Wayne Airport (SNA), a major aviation hub in Southern California. Owned and operated by the County of Orange, SNA accommodates approximately 520 private general aviation aircraft and provides parking for more than 8,300 vehicles, serving 11 million passengers and receiving 17,330 tons of air cargo annually. The airport is home to 12 commercial and 2 cargo airlines, along with 379 County tiedown and hangar spaces to support aviation needs. Notable entities like the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Lyons Air Museum also operate at SNA.

Hill’s responsibilities encompassed a wide range of services including program and project management, estimating, scheduling, and design and administration of Oracle Unifier for project controls. The team focused on facilitating smooth operations with minimal disruption while maintaining safety during various improvement projects, including taxiway rehabilitation, airfield lighting and signage installments, security enhancements, and power resilience upgrades.

Key projects Hill helped deliver include:

  • Taxiway B Rehabilitation, a $4.5 million reconstruction of Taxiway B to enhance a 75-foot-wide, full-length taxiway for commercial and general aviation aircraft. This project included refurbishing approximately 4,300 LF of pavement and updating edge lighting and signage to meet FAA standards. Implementing the design-bid-build delivery method, Hill provided scheduling services and efficiently managed FAA grant funding for the improvements.
  • Airport Operations Center Remodel, a $20 million project to revamp existing spaces in Terminal A for a state-of-the-art emergency operations/response facility. This includes updating IT systems and MEP components and implementing an advanced video monitoring system. Using the Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) delivery method, the Hill team maintained existing operations during the renovation with no lost time.
  • Central Utility Plant Resiliency and Operations Center, as part of a $40 million project, involved significant enhancements to SNA’s 7-MW cogeneration system. This included the installation of a 2.8-MW solar photovoltaic system and a 6-MW battery energy storage system, and updates to the control systems for improved functionality and reliability.

Hill also provided construction management oversight for various small-scale terminal projects, ranging from single-day retrofits to long-term enhancements. This included the Boingo retrofit installation as part of a terminal-wide WiFi improvement project, and upgrades to the UPS system for enhanced service uptime capabilities at Administration Building 3160.