Quantifying the Impacts of Delayed Maintenance of Airport Assets: A Guide (2024)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
1.1 Background
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides public resources to build, maintain, and operate airports. All airport projects funded by federal agencies are regulated by the FAA. According to the Government Accountability Office (2015), most larger airports obtain more than half of their capital funding through on-site-generated income, while smaller airports, including small non-hubs and general aviation airports, tend to rely on Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, about $16.1 billion was spent to construct and safely operate U.S. airports. Out of this, about $9.9 billion was spent on operations, which includes airport asset maintenance. According to ACRP Report 138: Preventive Maintenance at General Aviation Airports Volume 2: Guidebook, airport maintenance consists of maintaining airside and landside assets. Airside assets may include runway and taxiway pavements, airfield lighting, markings, signs, ramp areas, drainage systems, hydrant fueling systems, and visual and navigational aids (NAVAIDS). Landside assets may include structures and systems, such as terminal buildings; baggage handling systems; passenger boarding bridges; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems; fuel storage infrastructure; service and access roadways; environmental works; snow removal equipment; ground and aircraft support equipment; aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) equipment; and fleet vehicles. Airside assets can have a negative impact on aircraft safety and operation if not properly maintained. Maintenance of landside assets is also critical because these assets help passengers and airport equipment move safely and efficiently.
Airport maintenance can be divided into four types: operation, preventive, reactive, and predictive (Ploeger et al. 2015b). Operational maintenance is related to the removal of snow and foreign objects from pavement, and maintaining electrical/mechanical equipment, lighting systems, NAVAIDS, etc. These activities must be performed as required to keep airports safe for landing and takeoff. Preventive maintenance activities include tasks that mitigate degradation of an infrastructure system or its components. Preventive maintenance, when performed regularly as needed, can extend facility and component service life and yield optimum asset performance outputs. This results in reduced costs and improved user satisfaction. Reactive maintenance involves fixing components after they break rather than fixing the system or components when performing preventive maintenance. This type of activity incurs higher system costs compared to conducting regular preventive maintenance. Many airports are in reactive mode and spend more resources than necessary, as opposed to spending with a regular preventive maintenance approach. Reactive maintenance can have adverse effects on customer service and may reduce revenue. Predictive maintenance involves testing and monitoring equipment and facilities and predicting potential failures. This method is used in equipment and vehicles. If predictive and preventive maintenance are simultaneously implemented, it will ensure minimal impact on airport operation and safety.
Preventive maintenance is crucial to help improve and extend the life cycle of facilities, systems, and components. An asset management plan implements preventive maintenance and allows an
asset to reach its maximum life cycle or service life without a reactive approach. Other benefits of preventive maintenance include safety, reduction of rehabilitation cost, reduction in energy usage, legal and regulatory requirement fulfillment, reduction of environmental impacts, and improved community and customer service. To obtain the maximum benefits of asset management, airport owners must account for the asset’s performance over its life cycle and decide when to implement preventive maintenance to improve the asset’s life. Performing preventive maintenance before the asset condition deteriorates significantly (i.e., needs rehabilitation) can extend the life of the asset. The main objective is to spend the least amount of money by conducting preventive maintenance so that assets can last for longer periods.
As mentioned above, if the preventive maintenance of airport assets is delayed, it will have a negative impact on the life of the assets, as well as on their maintenance and rehabilitation costs. Delaying preventive maintenance of any assets is not preferred. However, due to budget shortfalls and other airport constraints, some asset maintenance must be delayed. Airports delay preventive maintenance of some assets without knowing the consequences of those delays in the total maintenance and rehabilitation costs incurred. There are also no tools or systematic methods to calculate the extra costs incurred in asset maintenance and rehabilitation when preventive maintenance is delayed by a specific number of years. Therefore, this study focuses on determining the impact of delayed maintenance on airport assets’ maintenance and rehabilitation costs. It also focuses on answering the following questions related to delayed maintenance of airport assets:
- How are the airports maintaining their assets during budget constraints?
- Do airports consider the impact of delayed maintenance of their assets when they need to delay maintenance for a certain period?
- Do airports have guidelines and tools available to quantify the impact of maintenance delays on maintenance and rehabilitation costs?
- Are the airports incorporating the monetary impact caused by delayed maintenance on the overall asset life-cycle cost while preparing the maintenance budget?
1.2 Objectives and Scope
Airport owners need to ensure they have sufficient funding to conduct preventive maintenance to optimize the life of their assets. However, airport owners rarely have enough money to conduct preventive maintenance of all these assets. Airport owners should plan their airport budget strategically, taking into consideration new capital construction, as well as preventive maintenance, and the reactive maintenance of existing assets. This process needs to provide steps to efficiently apply the overall airport budget to maximize their assets’ life-cycle cost. It is therefore critical to allocate airport budgets effectively so that delayed preventive maintenance will have a minimum impact on the assets’ life-cycle costs, aircraft safety and operation, and user comfort. The goal of this research is to prepare a framework, process, and tools that help airports manage their budgets and assets by quantifying the impact of delayed preventive maintenance. The objectives of this research are:
- To identify the maintenance budget preparation processes used by airports.
- To develop a general framework and method to quantify the consequences of delayed maintenance of an airport’s airside and landside assets.
- To develop spreadsheet tools to quantify the impact of delays on airport maintenance and rehabilitation costs for specific airside and landside assets.
1.3 Overview of Research Approach
The research for ACRP Project 09-20 builds on the qualitative and quantitative methodology to identify the practices and processes used by airports to determine the impact of delayed maintenance on their budgets. The team divided this research into two phases. In Phase I,
the research team interviewed the airport asset managers to identify practices in management and maintenance budget preparation, develop a framework and method to quantify the consequences of delayed maintenance, and create tools and models the airport can use to predict the impact of delayed maintenance on airport costs, operations, and users. In Phase II, the research team collected the quantitative data from case study airport projects to build the framework to quantify the impact of delayed maintenance. They also prepared spreadsheet tools to determine the extra maintenance and rehabilitation costs required when maintenance is delayed over certain periods for airside and landside assets. The research team prepared the spreadsheet tools for pavement runways, runway lighting, runway markings, and signs under airside assets. Concerning the landside assets, the research team prepared spreadsheet tools for airport service vehicles, snow removal equipment, HVAC systems, baggage handling systems, and passenger boarding bridges.
The researchers conducted a literature review and online search to collect information relevant to the current state of practices. They also compiled best practices related to the budgeting process and asset management, as well as the impact of delayed maintenance in aviation, building, highway, and transportation assets. The literature review prioritizes the budgeting and maintenance processes and the impact of delayed asset maintenance. Previous research conducted under ACRP Report 69: Asset and Infrastructure Management for Airports—Primer and Guidebook, ACRP Report 138: Preventive Maintenance at General Aviation Airports Volume 2, and ACRP Report 139: Optimizing Airport Building Operations and Maintenance Through Retrocommissioning: A Whole-Systems Approach was reviewed. The team also reviewed similar research conducted under NCHRP Research Report 859: Consequences of Delayed Maintenance of Highway Assets regarding highway assets. The information review was useful in developing a questionnaire for Phase I interviews with airport asset managers and the Phase II data collection questionnaire. It also assisted in preparing the framework and spreadsheet tools for quantifying the consequences of delayed maintenance of airport assets.
The research team then conducted virtual interviews with select airport asset managers based on the findings from the literature review and the online search. First, the research team developed the interview questionnaire and sent it to project panel members for their feedback, after which the questionnaire was updated. The research team then contacted asset managers from various airports for interviews based on airport type (large-hub, medium-hub, small-hub, and non-hub) and location. In total, 18 personal virtual interviews were conducted during this phase. The objectives of the virtual interviews were to:
- Identify reports and other documents relevant to the project that were not available through regular literature reviews and sources.
- Identify the state of practices in asset management and maintenance budget preparation.
- Identify the process for developing a framework and method to quantify the consequences caused by delayed maintenance.
- Determine whether the airports have used frameworks, tools, and models to predict the impact of delaying asset maintenance on cost, operations, and user comfort.
- Identify whether airport agencies can provide viable case study data in preparing framework and spreadsheet tools to determine the impact of delayed maintenance on airport overall budgets.
- Gather practical recommendations related to the development of frameworks and tools to determine the monetary impact delayed maintenance has on airport budgets.
The research team then collected quantitative data from six airports related to four airside (pavement, lighting, signs, and markings) and five landside assets (service vehicles, snow removal equipment, HVAC, baggage handling systems, and passenger boarding bridges). The team also conducted follow-up interviews with three airport asset managers to clarify the data provided. These data were used to develop frameworks and spreadsheet tools for the airport assets. The team also used spreadsheet tools to calculate the delayed maintenance cost using hypothetical
data. This analysis shows how the impact of delayed maintenance varies based on an asset’s condition, age, and the number of years the maintenance is delayed.
The team sent these spreadsheet tools to six airport asset managers so that they could input information from their airports. Out of the six airports selected for validation purposes, three airports responded to the survey.
The airports that responded were satisfied overall with the spreadsheet tools developed by the research team. One airport stated that, when the asset manager used the tools to determine the delayed maintenance cost, the estimated costs were not reliable due to default maintenance costs and inflation cost factors used in the spreadsheet tools. Therefore, the research team has provided the option for airports to enter their maintenance costs.
There were some minor suggestions provided by the airports. One airport stated that the estimate would be more reliable if the assumptions provided in calculating the delayed maintenance cost could be avoided. For this, the real deterioration models of assets need to be collected. One airport stated that, due to high inflation, the maintenance cost estimate will not be reliable if the default cost inflation factor is used. All the airports stated that a user guide would be helpful to use these spreadsheet tools effectively. Based on this feedback, the team prepared a user guide the airports can reference when they have difficulties using these spreadsheet tools. In the guide, the research team also explains the process of using these spreadsheet tools when applying them to similar airport assets. Additionally, the team provides recommendations for gathering the real deterioration data needed to calculate the monetary impact of delayed maintenance. In Chapter 8 of this report, the research team has also provided topics of further research critical to the successful implementation of these products.
1.4 Organization of This Report
This report is organized into eight chapters. The introductory chapter presents background information, research objectives, the scope and approach, and the report’s organization. Chapter 2 describes the literature review findings. Chapter 3 focuses on the interview’s findings related to airport budget preparation processes, airport maintenance budget allocation processes, and the impact of delayed maintenance of airport assets. Chapter 4 describes a general framework for quantifying the impact of delaying maintenance on airport assets. Chapter 5 provides the procedures developed for quantifying the impact of delayed maintenance of airside assets (airport pavements, lighting, markings, and signs). This chapter also shows the findings obtained from the spreadsheet tools to calculate the delayed maintenance costs with hypothetical data for these airside assets. Chapter 6 provides the procedures developed to quantify the consequence of delayed maintenance on landside assets (airport service vehicles, snow removal equipment, HVAC, baggage handling systems, and passenger boarding bridges). This chapter also shows the findings obtained from the spreadsheet tools to calculate the delayed maintenance costs with hypothetical data for these landside assets. Chapter 7 provides the generic procedures to calculate the consequence of delayed maintenance of other airport assets not included in Chapters 5 and 6. This chapter also describes how the spreadsheet tools developed in this study can be used for other airport assets. Chapter 8 provides a summary and recommendations for future research.
Appendices A through D are supplemental to this report. They include checklists to help airport asset managers identify the maintenance activities needed for air and landside assets.
