Social Paradigms in Contemporary Airport Design

Increased demand for traffic puts the Aviation industry in front of multiple challenges, starting with capacity. Traditional airport design matrices do not cope properly with the evolution of design requirements and project participants’ needs, especially in a multidisciplinary context that requires high skilling. In this setting, Architects are rulers of the terminal and lead managers of Project Information. These are generated and managed through Social processes who leverage joint use of knowledge to fulfill project requirements. Often the need for reliable project information is not understood by project participants and project clients, therefore causing reworkings, overtimes and an overall increase of project cost. Innovative project management methodologies based on social aspects are needed to implement common practices and support collaboration, shared design, problem solving. The target is producing consistent Project Information. The proposed research aims to re-align people, process and technology in Airport Design with a lean design methodology built on the project sociotechnical system to maximize project value for passengers, airlines and airport management companies.