BOGGUS: Well, you know, you look at non-aeronautical revenue. It’s been such a key issue
over the past few years. Some airports are
approaching 50 percent or better non-aeronautical
revenue, some of the large airports, and that is
kind of strange when you sit back and think of it,
how that happened. So that shows that the focus
of the airport has somewhat changed. And with
the greater amount of infrastructure we have in
U.S. airports being somewhat old, there is a lot
of re-lifing that’s going on, whether it’s through
technology, the customer experience, the changes
in the way we check in, or the fact that maybe
your first experience at the airport is a security
checkpoint and not the check-in desk. We are now
looking at automated boarding. I don’t know if that
will go through.
Katherine was just talking about the customer
experience for the air carriers. I often want to
know if you’re a low-cost carrier, somebody with,
say, the Ryanair type of attitude. Do you really
care about the passenger experiences? One of
the U.S. low-cost carriers has a video out saying,
“Yeah, we’re sorry. We don’t really care, but it’s
about low cost.” So how do you balance that
attitude against design criteria between what we
call legacy carriers — and I’ll say Southwest is
probably a legacy carrier more than a low-cost
now — with some of the newer low-cost carriers?
I think there’s an interesting conversation on
balancing the terminal experience between your
low-cost passengers and what we call our legacy
passengers.
GOUDREAU: I’m just going to add one more
thing, not talking about the passenger experience,
but where we’re starting to see, from the
consulting community, some money going, and
that is in retro-commissioning. HAS has done
— actually, I think they’re kind of out in the
lead in terms of what they are doing with their
retro-commissioning efforts, and that is looking
at their existing systems, their HVAC, their boiler
plants, all of that and saying, “Rather than do a
wholesale replacement, can we take any of this
existing equipment? Can we make any less costly
modifications to it and improve our efficiency and
our usage on it?” And I think that’s an area we
are going to start seeing more and more airports
go to as the airlines balk at additional funding for
wholesale replacement.
DWYER: And I’d jump right on top of that,
because that hits the nail on the head in terms of
what we are looking for, and I know other airports
are. We’ve got a lot of existing infrastructure, and
the best practice that we could use is how can
we best reuse and make the best use of what we
have. And it sort of ties into the sustainability
aspect of it, but right now, we’re squeezing pennies
at both of our airports to try to keep our costs
down, because we realize we’re in a competitive
environment, but we are still there spending
money on baggage systems, concessions. We try
to leverage as much as we can of best practices,
to leverage outside dollars, whether it’s TSA for
baggage, FAA for airfield improvements, the AIP
program. Any consultant that can come in and
best utilize that and work with us to utilize either
one of those and understand working in that
environment, I would consider that a best practice.
BREWER: Right. And there’s always that inherent
tension between the airport and the airlines of
wanting to keep costs low. Obviously, Ralph,
you’re doing that at MWAA, but there is also the
need, the desire that this airport is your gateway
to your community, and you want it to project the
best image that you possibly can.
Roddy, speaking of that, let’s talk a little bit
about alternative delivery. Airports are looking
at design-build processes or public-private
partnerships. What are the trends that you are
seeing in those regards?
BOGGUS: Well, you know, we are an infrastructure
firm, and part of what Parsons Brinckerhoff has in
its toolbox is a construction company, and we get
asked a lot of times, what are you seeing out in the
world that we can use here, because we want to get
our product to market sooner. We all know funding
is difficult, so is there a way we can use somebody
else’s money? So, what are the opportunities that
we as an airport can use to bring things together
sooner? Because these days, the first thing that
comes out of everybody’s mouth is, “Well, how
much is it going to cost, and where is the money
going to come from?”
We answer these questions a lot, and we talk
about alternative delivery. Design-build is an
alternative delivery, and we are seeing a lot more
design-build. We are seeing some airports use it for
certain kind of projects but still go back to (CM or)
CMR (construction management at-risk) or design-
bid-build for others. We hear a lot about P3, public-
private partnerships these days and that can be a
