I’m writing this entry while looking out onto a snowy airfield at Kansas City International Airport. We’ve had a tremendous four days here at the ACI-NA/ACC/FAA Airport Planning Redefined Course and NEPA Workshop. Our events here were attended by more than 120 airport professionals from around the country.
As my colleague Matt Griffin mentioned in his blog entry yesterday, we covered a wide range of planning and environmental topics during the planning course including visioning in the planning process, aviation forecasting, facility requirements development, new frontiers in airport planning, and how to effectively transition from planning to environmental assessment to implementation.
In my opinion, there were three things that made these past four days in Kansas City so worthwhile:
- A very dedicated group of presenters and session moderators, all of whom were subject matter experts with practical experience in airport planning and development.
- An incredibly engaged group of attendees that actively engaged presenters concerning the planning issues facing them.
- A host, the Kansas City Aviation Department, that made it easy to bring out the best in both our presenters and attendees.
Highlights of the Airport Planning Redefined Course included comparisons of Canadian and American approaches to planning and capital development, effective ways to engage stakeholders in planning processes, and how sustainability concepts should be incorporated into airport planning.
I’d like to thank our unparalleled steering group of which I was honored to be a member. Our other members were Rick Busch from Denver International Airport, Ian Redhead from the Kansas City Aviation Department, Ralph Thompson from FAA, Paula Hochstetler from ACC, Sue Schalk from Aerofinity, Holland Young from Jacobs Consultancy, and John van Woensel from CH2M Hill. Special thanks also go out to ACI-NA Conferences Department’s wonder woman Casey Jackson for making all of the rest of us look so good. Finally, thanks to all of you who braved the sub-zero temperatures here in Kansas City to participate. We hope you all left with some new ideas that will let you plan airports better.
Happy holidays to all,
-Chris Oswald, VP Safety & Technical Operations