By Katherine Preston
“Expand your horizons”
“A meeting of the minds”
“You learn something new every day”
“Change is good”
“Many hands make light work” …
I could go on but I think you get the point. These familiar idioms are just some that come to mind when describing the joint sessions of the Operations and Technical Affairs and Environmental Affairs Committees this afternoon. After a day and a half of meeting separately, our groups got the chance to come together today and discuss issues of mutual concern, view these topics from a different perspective, and encourage communication and cooperation between the two groups. Environmental affairs and operations professionals aren’t necessarily focused on the same set of priorities on a daily basis. But there is a lot of overlap, and it really shows in our members’ enthusiasm for these joint sessions.
The first joint session focused on Airport Sustainability and featured speakers from both committees. Sustainability is not just the purview of environmental managers. Airport planners, maintenance, and operations professionals are integral to implementing sustainability practices and environmental management systems. You can’t put in solar panels on the roof of an airport parking garage or terminal without the close coordination between environmental managers and operations and planning experts.
In our second joint session, Ops/Tech Chairman Sam Sleiman (MassPort) moderated a diverse panel of environmental committee members, Willis Reinsurance, Corps of Engineers and ACI-World staff. Despite viewing climate change risks and adaptation through different lenses, they all had one thing in common: a desire to protect airports from climate change risks.
Kicking off the panel, Sleiman admitted that he used to be a climate change skeptic, but now believes “climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation”. He pointed out the tremendous potential impacts of climate change on airports, which will affect both coastal and land-locked airports, including sea-level rise, extreme weather events, water and fuel shortages and growth restrictions to name a few. Thinking about all these potential challenges, it is more important than ever to break down organizational silos and work together in order meet these challenges head-on and protect our industry. After all, there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’, and if all else fails, having a team is essential so you can blame ‘the other guy’!
