Denver International Airport

1
Denver International Airport

• An Engineering Fiasco

2
Before I Begin
It is important to realize that a disasters
magnitude cannot be measured by body count alone.
The Denver International Airport qualifies as a
disaster because of the economic and social
ramifications. While this disaster may not have
cost anyone their lives, the sixteen-month delay
caused by the failure of the baggage
transportation made the airport the laughingstock
of the engineering community, costing
stockholders both their pride and their money.
Denver International Airport is practically a
text book lesson on the necessity of careful
planning, and the dangers of streamlining the
design of any project.
3
Information about Denver International Airport
and its construction.

• It was approved for construction in 1989, because
  its predecessor, Stapleton was starting to get
  too small for the growing city, and was first
  scheduled to open on October 31, 1993 .
• It was the first major airport to be built in the
  United States in over 20 years.
• The Denver international Airport is comprised of
  three terminals, and several runways, and is
  built on 53 square miles of land. (Thats twice
  the size of Manhattan Island!)

4
The Foundation of Failure.

• Problems first arose at the Denver International
  Airport when it came time to implement a baggage
  handling system.
• DIA planning officials had anticipated each of
  the individual airlines planning to use the
  airport to provide their own baggage systems
  however, as of 1991, United Airlines, was the
  only just beginning to negotiate a contract.
• As a result the DIA officials renegotiated the
  contract, to have the system being designed for
  United service the entire airport

5
About the Development Firm

• The Company that United had contracted was Dallas
  based engineering firm BAE Systems Inc. one of
  the leaders of the industry.
• The baggage handling system that United had
  contracted was fully automated a radical design
  which, when completed, would only be the second
  of its kind in the world, the first being DIAs
  sister airport in Munich Germany.
• Because of this, BAE had been reluctant to take
  the original contract, and when the contract was
  renegotiated, they were forced to build one three
  times the original's size.

6
Major Problems Facing BAE

• Design Scope -The baggage system which BAE needed
  to deliver was on such a massive scale, making
  the design quite challenging.
• Difficulty Several factors created by DIA and
  United Airlines made the already daunting
  challenge nearly impossible
• Time BAE had only 17 months to complete the
  system

7
The Ridiculous Scope of the Project.

• As stated earlier, Denver International Airport
  is enormous, for BAE this meant massive amounts
  of machinery needed to be installed.
• This meant that glitches in the system could be
  nearly impossible to pinpoint.

• List of components.
• 20 miles of track
• 6 miles of conveyer belts
• 56 laser arrays that read bar coded tags
• 400 frequency readers
• 3,100 standard size baggage Telecars
• 450 6.5 ft by 4 ft oversize cars
• 55 separate computers

8
Additional Design Problems caused by the Airlines

• As difficult as designing the system was,
  airlines planning to use the airport made it even
  more difficult.
• They did this by demanding thousands of major and
  minor modifications to the system.
• The largest modification was United Airlines
  request to remove one of the two loops of track
  that serviced their section of the airport.

9
The Absurd Timeframe

• BAE Systems was able to begin work on the baggage
  system in April of 1992, less than 17 months
  before the airports scheduled opening October
  31, 1993.

• This is a sharp contrast to DIAs sister airport
  in Munich. German technical advisors told their
  Denver counterparts that they had spent two
  entire years testing the system. In addition,
  they had the system running 24 hours a day for
  six months before the airport opened

10
Critical Errors in Design and construction.

• The decision to build the system came so late in
  the construction process
• Lack of communication between BAE and their
  German Counterparts
• Lack of communication within BAE

11
The Decision that Came too Late.

• The decision to commission the baggage system so
  late in the building process had a second adverse
  consequence.
• Aside from creating a ridiculous deadline, it
  also meant that most of the construction to the
  building was already done, so BAE had to build
  around the existing architecture, even though it
  should have been the other way around.
• Since the building was designed to accommodate a
  conventional baggage system, with long narrow
  hallways and sharp turns, the design was
  particularly difficult.

12
The Mistake of Ignoring Experienced Help.

• Another critical failures in the project was made
  by BAE systems, this mistake was that they paid
  little attention to advise from the engineers
  that worked on the Munich baggage system
• Because of this foolish mistake, BAE engineers
  had to practically design the entire system from
  scratch, when they could have saved time, money,
  and effort by basing their system on the already
  existing, and working German system.

13
The Million Dollar Jigsaw puzzle

• Perhaps the most foolish mistake on anyones part
  during the entire project was the utter lack of
  communication between the different design teams
  working on the project.
• Simply put, after being ordered to create one of
  the worlds most complex machines, the designers
  made all of its components separately, with
  little or no understanding of how the system
  functioned as a whole, like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

14
The Coup de Grace.

• While all of the previous blunders contributed to
  the failure of the system, the worst mistake was
  still yet to come. It was a decision so terrible,
  so foolish, so absolutely idiotic that it would
  put to shame every single person who worked on
  the project.

15
The decision to broadcast the preliminary test of
the revolutionary new baggage system on
national television
16

• What camera crews depicted was truly a disaster
  carts jammed together, damaged luggage
  everywhere, some bags literally split in half,
  and the tattered remains of clothing strewn about
  causing subsequent carts to derail. Finally,
  adding insult to injury, half the luggage that
  survived the ordeal ended up at the wrong
  terminal.
• These result came after the airports opening was
  delayed not once, but twice.

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Aftermath of the test.

• Denvers mayor, Wellington Webb, announced the
  third opening delay.
• Denver called in a German engineering firm Denver
  called in a German engineering firm Logplan, who
  had worked on the Munich Airport.

18
Logplans Observations and suggested solutions

• The system was too complex in its design.
• The scope of the design was far too large.
• The system did not have a failsafe.

• Recommended simplifying the design
• Suggested that system be divided into three
  parts, one for each terminal.
• They Implemented a manual tug and cart system as
  backup

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The Grand Opening.
The Grand Opening.

• After a fourth delay, Denver International
  Airport finally opened on February, 28 1995.
• However the automated system only serviced
  outbound flights in concourse .
• The manual backup system serviced the other two
  terminals

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The Bottom Line.

• The delays cost the city of Denver thirty three
  million dollars a month in interest.
• In total, delays postponed the airports opening
  by sixteen months that equates to put the airport
  being 1.3 billion dollars over budget!

21
The Results of the Delay on Airline Confidence

• Airlines loss of faith in DIA was reflected in
  their contracts.
• American would only agree to a month-to-month
  lease.
• Continental downsized from twenty gates, to four.
• Southwest shunned DIA entirely.

22
Who Paid the Price.

• It was ultimately the travelers who would pay for
  this engineering blunder.
• DIAs costs per passenger was 16.50 compared to
  the 8 national average.
• This meant that fairs increased, one example is
  United Airlines, who raised fairs by an average
  of forty dollars.

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What can be Learned From DIA.

• Need for careful methodic planning.
• Had the baggage system been decided upon before
  planners moved onto construction, it could have
  been integrated into the architectural design,
  greatly simplifying the project.
• The importance of communication.
• If the parties involved paid more attention to
  their German counterparts, designers would have
  known that more time was needed to debug the
  system.
• Had there been more communication between the
  different design teams, there would have been a
  better understanding of the complexity of the
  system, and many of the design flaws could have
  been corrected before it was assembled.