Managing Complex Assets in an Airport Atmosphere

At Tampa International Airport (TPA), one of America’s favorite airports, we understand that travel can be stressful and, at times, frustrating. So we do our best to ensure that all of our passenger experiences are pleasant and uneventful. Free Wi-Fi, 70 shops and restaurants, a safe, clean, comfortable environment; and a great team of TPA employees and partners are available to support our passengers in the event that incidents do arise.

Achieving the vision: Recently, TPA has been investing heavily to improve our facilities and services offerings. However, this does not guarantee perfection – assets can fail, and events like hurricanes can prevent normal operations. Because of this, we continue to invest in innovative solutions to lessen the impact to our passengers. Predicting and proactively correcting situations before they occur improves our ability to provide our travelers with an experience that is both timely and safe.

Managing the moving parts: Like most businesses, TPA has the traditional assets (industrial equipment, shuttles, vehicles, buildings, escalators, etc.) that need to be maintained, repaired and replaced. While most asset management solutions do a thorough job supporting the asset lifecycle management process, TPA has a great deal of non-traditional complex assets that need to be tracked, maintained, repaired and/or replaced to ensure successful aircraft operations, passenger movement, safety and government compliance. For example:

• Runways: unique attributes, such as friction and build-up

• Signage: visibility, accuracy, placement

• Lights: physical structure, color, brightness, operations

• Painted stripes: condition, reflectiveness, build up

• Video systems: quality, location, retention

• Fuel systems: safety, function, traceability

Managing the unknown: In general, preparing for acts of nature and other catastrophic events creates a level of anxiety that most people find difficult to experience once in a lifetime, much less on an annual basis. At TPA, it is our duty to be prepared for the worst, respond with precision, and recover as quickly as possible. Our preparedness and actions will limit the impact to our passengers and partners, lessen the potential mass destruction upon our assets and reduce bodily harm. Events like:

• Storms (hurricanes, thunder and lightning)

• Wildlife strikes

• Aircraft failure

• Toxic spills

Leveraging partnerships: TPA has engaged Esri’s airport industry specialists to assist in the design and development of short and long term flight plans. These plans will ensure that we are utilizing the appropriate technology on the correct architecturally designed platform, to reduce complexity and accelerate our deployment strategy.

"Predicting and Proactively Correcting Situations Before They Occur Improves Our Ability to Provide Our Travelers with an Experience That Is both Timely and Safe"

Leveraging technology: Through innovation of Esri’s ArchGis technology, we are crafting an asset/event management solution with the flexibility to address the unique needs of an airport. This effort will redefine the processes and technology to support airport:

• Geospatial mapping

• Asset management lifecycle

• Inspections, periodic services, and break fix processes

• FAA 139 inspection and reporting process

• Real estate/concession compliance and inspection

• Reporting and Dashboard presentation

• Notification and alerts

• Mobility

• CityWorks integration

Eliminating complexity and customizations: Reducing our footprint to only Esri and CityWorks solutions will minimize the overall complexity of TPA’s geospatial mapping, asset management and event management solutions. Implementing based on an agile approach utilizing industry best practices and proven technology will ensure vision to deployment in 60-90 days.

Mapping the future: It’s not just about the airfield. In 2020 we will begin mapping our entire indoor footprint leveraging Esri’s Indoor mapping solution. For the first time, our passengers will be able to locate restaurants, water fountains, restrooms, support services, and directions on how to get from their car to their gate and back again utilizing this technology. In addition, it will improve our ability to quickly identify and mobilize resources during an event.

Central command and reporting: For daily operations TPA will leverage Esri’s Storyboards, which streamline reporting information. For preparing, executing and recovering from the unexpected, TPA is enabling Esri’s Dashboards. Dashboards provide a consistent approach to monitoring assets as well as a central command center to provide real time updates during a catastrophic event or emergency maintenance situation. Storyboards and Dashboards are driven by a central source of data that is collected from numerous systems and devices in the field, ensuring that everyone is seeing and using a single source of truth.

This is a journey: The completion ofPhase I created a foundation that has enabled us to track, maintain and report on over 40% of our total assets today. In Phase II we will continue to map the remaining 60% of our assets, sunset existing systems, complete our flight plans, deploy an improved FAA 139 inspection and reporting process, develop an Emergency Management Solution (SMS) and improve mobility capability. The partnership between Tampa International Airport, CityWorks and Esri will be vital in this journey