Case Studies

Challenge As one of the fastest growing airports in Canada, EIA serves more than six million passengers a year, well above its 5.5 million capacity. Due to the province's vibrant economy, the airport has seen passenger traffic double over the past decade. To support this phenomenal growth, EIA embarked on a $1.1-billion project in 2007 that will expand its facility and nearly double its passenger capacity by 2012. Implementing such a large-scale construction project involves coordinated planning and execution among many groups including hundreds of staff, contractors and consultants. To efficiently manage the project, EIA needed a system that could provide a complete picture of who is where at the site and what construction project or activity may be occurring within its vicinity. Previously, EIA's Technical Services team supplied field workers with paper drawings of construction sites and utility networks created using a computer-aided design (CAD) system. While the drawings delivered rich graphical representations of airport assets, they did not provide a spatial context for analyzing relationships between the assets. As work plans changed daily, it became a costly, time-consuming task to update, reprint and redistribute the drawings to field workers. Utility Locator Increases Efficiency and Safety of Billion-Dollar Expansion Edmonton International Airport (EIA) in Alberta is Canada's largest airport by land area. It is expected that passenger traffic at the busy airport will increase to nine million by 2020. To accommodate this rapid growth, the airport embarked on a large-scale facility expansion project and developed a utility locator application that facilitates smooth and safe construction operations. 1 Esri Canada | Edmonton International Airport GIS Takes Flight

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