SMART airports

A moniker for the many new aspects of aviation technology, AAM includes drone operations, electronic vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) operations and electronic conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) operations. These aircraft technologies represent significant changes in infrastructure needs and offer new passenger and cargo movement opportunities.

Hanson is actively involved with our clients in planning and developing the infrastructure that will accommodate the future eVTOL and eCTOL aircraft and their servicing needs. This new technology will be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2025 and 2026 and will most likely transport passengers and cargo within a few years.

We offer our clients new knowledge in how airports will be developed for AAM — knowledge augmented by our strategic relationships with aircraft original equipment manufacturers and a major international vertiport developer and operator. Our service for our clients includes obtaining FAA site approval for public-use vertiports on airport property, charging and electrification planning and development, urban traffic management technology, supplemental fueling (hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel), planning and concept-of-operations planning for incorporating the new aircraft technologies into the airport environment.

Airports face ever-increasing demands for electrical service. These demands are associated with electric vehicles and electric rental cars on airport roadways and parking lots, airside electric ground service vehicles, electric mass transit vehicles and, eventually, electric aircraft. To accommodate these exceptional new electric demands, airports must understand and manage today’s electrical demand and forecast and plan for demand well into the future.

The first step in planning for future electrical demand is to find new efficiencies today. Hanson has supported numerous clients with energy audits and energy roadmaps that have improved their electrical demand by as much as 20% with associated savings. After an energy audit, we generate a demand forecast that considers growth in existing electrical users and includes the ground-based and air-based technologies to come. With a forecast of long-term demand, we can consider infrastructure upgrades, including local energy company considerations and upgrades for required additional energy distribution, microgrid upgrades, local renewable energy production, battery storage and energy resiliency upgrades.

Hanson’s electricity master planning services are designed around two primary goals: establishing a baseline for your current usage and finding efficiencies that save you money today and getting you ready for your future electrical demands.

For many years, we have provided commissioning and retro-commissioning services for airports, commercial buildings and educational facilities. Facility commissioning for new-build facilities is a best practice and a typical requirement for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Building systems typically lose efficiency in their heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) soft and hard assets by 2–4% each year of continued operation. Because of this, it is important to retro-commission your building systems every five years. This building system reset to originally commissioned operating parameters can save airports substantial energy costs and improve the useful life of HVAC assets over time.

U.S. airports have seen a growing interest in managing their total costs of capital asset ownership as a means of improving their bottom lines and saving capital investment costs. Using our licensed software, Decision Optimization Technology (DOT^TM), we help our clients improve their asset management programs. DOT^TM provides our clients with data management and life-cycle cost optimization across all asset classes by offering an easy-to-use interface with dashboards for analysis and presentations. The benefits of DOT^TM include reduced maintenance costs and energy efficiency, extended equipment life span, asset downtime avoidance and decision-making information, leading to lower asset ownership costs.

Airports have a significant bottom-line interest in reaching their aeronautical and nonaeronautical lands’ greatest potential from business recruitment, economic development and lease revenue perspectives. The FAA approval process for certain land uses and proposed changes in use can be time-consuming and cumbersome. We help our clients move through the complex process of airport layout plan approvals as they relate to airport land use, employ best practices for marketing property, keep up to date on the changes in FAA land-use directives and legislation and provide land-planning layouts that help make the most of a property’s revenue potential.

Digital tower technology has the potential to bring the air safety benefits of a staffed control tower to almost any uncontrolled airport. This technology will soon be certified by the FAA and can provide an airport site with positive control from a remote location. Digital tower technology can provide the same level of safety and control as a staffed tower for up to five or more airport locations from one physical control location when high-resolution cameras and ground-to-aircraft communications are fully utilized at each airport location. Digital tower technology has the potential to provide a higher level of overall air safety to many smaller airports for a fraction of the cost of providing and staffing a physical tower location.

We offer our clients access to this technology through our teaming agreement with Frequentis, the premier digital tower provider in the FAA’s process for technology certification. Together, we can provide a turnkey tower solution to airports that would not otherwise be able to obtain approval for a physical control tower.

Grants-in-aid are critical for the aviation industry and can be complex to find and secure. To help, Hanson has assembled a successful aviation grant-writing group consisting of aviation planners, municipal grant writers and a former FAA Airports Division employee. Our grant-writing team is available to our clients for annual capital improvement planning exercises and advice at any point in the fiscal year. The group specializes in finding innovative funding sources for capital projects that may not be high on the FAA’s traditional funding priority list. We also send our clients a quarterly grant-funding newsletter as a means of helping them prepare for the many notice-of-funding opportunities.