CitiriOS enables SEA Airport team to prevent issues, launch early, and cut costs on $715-million North Concourse Modernization

Situation

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) had the ambitious goals of upgrading and expanding facilities to improve its passenger experience, service quality, and capacity. Executing upgrades to essential airport facilities like concourses, terminals, and baggage systems, without disrupting existing operations, is a significant challenge. To add to the complexity of the situation for SEA, the constraint of being locked into a 2,500-acre footprint meant there was no margin for error.

To be successful, SEA and its Operational Readiness, Activation, and Transition (ORAT) Team needed to ensure that a detailed, comprehensive plan was in place before the overhaul could begin. Stakeholders must be engaged and actively collaborating, and thousands of complex, interdependent activities must be adaptive, efficient, and aligned with construction progress at all times.

Challenge

Previously, smaller and simpler airport projects were done via hands-on manual coordination using a ad hoc mix of spreadsheets, documents, and email messages. Planning, executing, and managing the thousands of activities necessary to operationalize the most complex project since the airport was built, through the same manual system, simply was not an option.

Mistakes, poor planning, inadequate coordination, and other oversights would lead to failed outcomes ranging from schedule overruns, benefit and value destruction, post-opening anomalies, flight delays, revenue losses, and poor passenger experiences. 

Solution

SEA implemented the CitiriOS owner scope management platform which provided the team with a single, centralized digital system to plan and manage their work, coordinate and collaborate with stakeholders, and to monitor and report on operational readiness progress in real-time.

Key elements the team used in their work included:

●      Guided workflows that automated ORAT functions around best practices, reducing the time to complete ORAT activities by up to 88%.

●      Digital Activity Lists that simplified and sped-up integrated system testing field verifications like gate-fit checks and trial requirements.

●      Live Documents that enabled collaborative SOP development improving development time by 68%.

●      Automated report production and distribution that cut reporting times in-half.

●      Dashboards empowering executives with real-time visibility into readiness progress.

●      Central repository for operational readiness risks, issues, action items and lessons learned.

“SEA’s team met the challenges they faced, head-on and created an incredible project outcome. Citiri is proud of the role we played in supporting them as they delivered the North Concourse Modernization ahead of schedule, under budget, and with all the benefits promised.” – Citiri CEO Ortez Gude