THE DESIGN-BUILD ISSUE
FLYING HIGH AT DFW
See why Khaled Naja chose design-build for DFW Airport’s new DPS office Khaled Naja, Executive Vice President for Infrastructure & Development at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, answers how designbuild is helping create the best possible product.
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What circumstances made this the right project to utilize design-build at DFW Airport? We used a design-build methodology for Terminal D. What makes this delivery method attractive was that the general building requirements were known. Design-build projects are delivered
8 Summer 2019
quicker than the traditional approach of design-bid-build, which was important to us since the officers and staff have been working out of the first building ever built on the airport. It was time to bring a modern, efficient facility to meet the needs of the department, as well as prepare for the future.
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What are some key features of the new building? How will they help improve officers’ daily routines, and how will they improve safety at DFW? I heard an interesting anecdotes from Alan Black (DFW Director of Public Safety). If you think back to the
1970s, females in the work force were traditionally in the secretarial pool. The current building was designed and built for the workforce at the time. There isn’t sufficient locker space for female officers and even restrooms are a challenge in the current building. The DPS workforce today is nearly one-third female. The new DPS Headquarters building was planned and designed for the entire expected workforce over the next 25 years. In June 2017 representatives from DPS, corporate communications, the designbuild team, and our design, code and construction team held a workshop to understand what was important for