Airport Experience® News - Customer Service Issue 2024

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she says. She points to two recent examples: OAK’s Terminal 2 ceiling tile replacement project and Terminal 1 carpet replacement project. “In both of those projects, we recycled thousands of pounds of waste material from our prior ceiling and floor treatments and selected new ceiling and floor treatments that were composed of recycled material.” Strategize And Prioritize Morrissey points out that airports must be strategic about their green construction goals and clearly define the values they want to pursue through these projects. “Several years ago, DEN developed a LEED strategy to ensure that we were selecting design options that would drive maximum utility savings, customer experience benefits and support building users, rather than chasing the lowest-cost pathway to certification,” he says. “We prioritize things like energy and water efficiency, indoor air quality and waste diversion because we know those elements will promote triple-bottom-line sustainability benefits and help us achieve our long-term goals.” B.J. Carpenter, airport environment and sustainability officer for Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), notes that to make construction truly sustainable, airports must balance costs.

“Our current focus is to ensure that our sustainability goals are baked into project requirements and understood by all ongoing and future projects at AUS,” he says. “Since we are a holistic campus, we have the benefit of addressing sustainability site-wide and all of our projects have the opportunity to incorporate goals that are in-line with their scope. This means we can apply sustainability principles to even the smallest of projects on our campus.” Carpenter adds that since AUS is owned and operated by the City of Austin , all of its construction projects must meet a minimum LEED Silver certification. The airport currently has three LEED Silver certified buildings, one LEED Gold certified building and one 3-Star Austin Energy Green Building certified building. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) currently has seven facilities on campus with LEED certification, the latest of which, the International Arrivals Facility, was awarded this summer and marked the largest SEA project to achieve LEED Silver. The Port of Seattle ’s Sustainable Evaluation Framework (SEF) ensures that capital projects at SEA prioritize carbon reduction, renewable energy and equitable outcomes, including support for tenant employees. “For example, we applied the SEF to our new Concourse C expansion project to avoid more than 90 percent of the

potential increase in carbon emissions by heating the facility with our low-carbon electricity rather than natural gas,” says Leslie Stanton, SEA’s senior sustainability manager. “In addition, the facility will meet more than 40 percent of the increased energy load with conservation and renewable energy by using the most energy efficient appliances and adding solar panels. Our SEF program complements the LEED program and the results lead to higher certification levels as the Concourse C Expansion is on track to be SEA’s first LEED Gold facility.” ATL’s priorities for construction projects include energy use, water use and construction waste diversion. “Energy use is impacted by many factors, including the building envelope, the mechanical systems serving the spaces and the type of lighting selected to illuminate the spaces,” Warren says. “Each of these components is included in an energy model for the LEED-certified buildings, allowing the airport and design team to select the most cost-efficient and energy-efficient combination of materials and equipment. To date, ATL’s LEED-certified buildings have used an estimated 28 percent less energy, 41 percent less water, and diverted a total of 90 percent, or more than 88,000 tons, of waste from local landfills, Warren says.

Right: Kansas City International was awarded LEED Gold certification for the new airport terminal airport is also in the planning stages to add a solar array project on the northwest corner of its property. that opened last year. Now, the

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AX NEWS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024