Olympus Air: A 20,000 Sq Ft Pre-Engineered Aircraft Hangar in Hazleton, PA

Built Through a Pennsylvania Winter, Pandemic Pricing, and a Supplier Strike

Building Overview

Three things tried to derail the Olympus Air project before it was finished: pandemic-era pricing volatility, a brutal Pennsylvania winter that shut down site work, and a union strike at the door supplier’s Michigan plant. None of them did.

Olympus Air is a 20,000 square foot pre-engineered Fixed-Base Operator hangar at Hazleton Regional Airport in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, serving private aircraft owners and a jet charter operation under one roof. Fire code compliance, airport authority regulations, and an integrated foam fire suppression system were engineered into the structure from the outset, not layered on after the fact.

Project Challenges

Engineering Bottleneck

Hangar projects have a reputation for stalling in engineering, and the reputation is earned. Door geometry, structural framing, and site-specific load calculations all have to lock in before fabrication begins. When that work waits, the entire project waits with it. We released engineering plans early on Olympus so the design was ahead of the field, and the field was never waiting on the desk.

Site Conditions

The building shipped on schedule. The site did not cooperate. A harsh Pennsylvania winter delayed slab and apron pours to the point where a less adaptive project would have sat idle for weeks. We restructured the erection sequence around what the site could actually support in those conditions and kept the crews working through the weather.

A Supplier Strike in the Middle of a Pandemic

The hangar door supplier, based in Michigan, was caught in a union strike during the pandemic. Door delivery slipped. A delay like that rolls through every downstream step of installation, and if nobody absorbs it in-house, it lands on the owner’s invoice. We assigned a field supervisor to oversee door sheeting once the doors arrived, which protected the schedule and kept the change order conversation off the table.

The Solutions

Each of those challenges had a default response that most builders would have taken. Push engineering through the standard review cycle. Halt site work until the ground thawed. Pass the door supplier’s delay back to the owner as a change order. On Olympus, we did none of those things.

Releasing engineering documents ahead of the normal sequence carried real risk. If the design had needed revision, we would have been pulling back released drawings. We took the risk anyway, because the critical path was too tight to wait. Restructuring the erection sequence around a frozen site required tighter coordination than a standard sequence would have, but it kept the crews on the clock through winter. Putting our own field supervisor on door sheeting meant absorbing cost that nobody had budgeted for, and absorbing it was the right call.

Most of what separates a good hangar project from one that drags is the willingness to take responsibility earlier in the chain than the contract technically requires. That was the shape of this one.

The Result

Olympus Air was delivered on time and on budget. The facility was operational for the private owners and the charter operator the moment the last inspection cleared. Projects this far outside normal operating conditions rarely end on schedule. This one did.