Delta Air Lines Uses ArcView GIS to Manage Space

Law Engineering and Environmental Services, Inc.—an ESRI authorized business partner, consultant, and reseller—utilized ArcView GIS and ArcInfo software to custom design a special software program for Delta Air Lines, Inc. Before buying the program, Tom Fulton, the general manager for properties and facilities at Delta in Atlanta, had a huge problem—2.5 million square feet of problem to be exact.

Fulton is the man responsible for how space is utilized in Delta's mammoth Technical Operations Center (TOC) located at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. The TOC covers an area three-quarters of a mile long and one-quarter of a mile wide. The center is so big that some people use bicycles and motorbikes to get around.

The TOC contains more than 6,000 employees and houses the vast array of resources necessary to perform maintenance on Delta's fleet of aircraft. That includes everything from a hanger that can nest five of Delta's biggest jets to all the offices that serve support functions for maintenance.

A world unto itself, life inside the building changes as much as the world outside. Departments expand and need new office space. Entire new departments are born and require a home. New metal shops wait to be built. Where are the departments going to go? Where can a new shop or office be added?

These were questions Fulton once had to answer the old-fashioned way.

"I would literally have to walk down the halls and see where there was space," Fulton says. "I would find an open area and say, 'Move there.'"

Enter Law's Information Management Services Division (IMSD) and Technical Manager Jeff Cargin. Delta was already doing business with Law, mostly involving environmental compliance. The Atlanta-based engineering and environmental services firm has projects around the globe and counts some of the world's biggest companies as clients.

The Information Management Services Division includes among its other clients Union Camp Corp., Weyerhauser Corp., Brown and Williamson, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Georgia Department of Transportation. Like these other companies, Delta had developed significant confidence in Law's ability to solve problems. Fulton asked Law if there was anything Law could do to help him manage the airline's maintenance space more efficiently.

Law responded with a resounding yes. Cargin viewed Delta's facility in terms of spatial relationships and saw an excellent opportunity for the application of GIS technology. "The Delta project would kind of tie it all together—a geographic software application for facility management," says Cargin.

Utilizing Law's experience in facilities space management, Cargin developed a computer-aided facility management (CAFM) program that flew nonstop into the heart of Delta's needs. The project took six months to complete and tapped the expertise of a dozen Law staffers.

The end result was a program that allows Fulton and his staff to do at the touch of a button what once took half a day. Law accomplished this by creating detailed CAD drawings of the building floor plans that covered every inch of the facility; these files were then converted to ArcInfo coverages and ArcView GIS shapefiles for use in the application. Now, if five different departments need to expand or make a move, Fulton can manipulate the data and plan the decisions with pinpoint accuracy. Essentially, the software turns the 2.5 million-square-foot building into an easily understood map.

Although many airline passengers may not be aware of the TOC, Fulton says the importance of it working efficiently cannot be understated. "This program provides the tools I need to manage this facility and handle my responsibilities," Fulton says. "I now have a global look at the facility, and this eliminates countless man-hours of preliminary field work and allows us to handle moves much more efficiently."

Making Fulton even more pleased is the user-friendly design of the program. Already swamped by continuous move-related headaches, Fulton knew his department couldn't be grounded by a software package only a computer programmer could love. Cargin and Law understood that ease of use would have to be a priority for the program to fly at Delta, and thus used ArcView GIS and Avenue to create a custom Windows-based application that could be learned quickly.

One click on a mouse can pull up a color-coded map that illustrates how a given area is being used. Another provides a list of room feature attributes, square footage, and other information. The program shows different floors, configurations of rooms and cubicles, and which departments occupy space.

Easy queries can help in planning. For instance, a query can instantly show if a wall is load-bearing or suitable for expansion. Floor types, restrooms, break areas, elevators, stairwells, dead space—it's all there on the screen.

Even in this age of electronic storage, hard copies are still sometimes needed. All the floor plans in the system can be printed, updated, or modified in minutes and then printed again. Under the old hard-copy system, new hard-copy floor plans might take days or even weeks to produce.

When Delta began entering data into the system, it found that it had drawings that hadn't been updated to account for changes in the floor plan. But as the software was developed, Law updated the floor plans as it entered data into the system, so keeping the files up to date is now easier.

"Law took their hard copies and went through the building and verified what was actually there. In some cases, the drawings were old and there had been a great deal of modifications. So basically, they got an application that had all the floor plans updated. That was the hard part of this, but they ended up with a good set of as-builts," Cargin says. "It's a custom-built application; we built it around their needs."

Installed in April 1997, the program has already proved to be a big help to Fulton—so much that he is already envisioning future uses for it.

"There are probably as many future opportunities out there as there are current benefits," he says. "I think we'll see a natural progression where we add more and more capabilities to the ArcView GIS application. We might use it to oversee our fire safety systems and a variety of other building systems that are by nature all over the place."

"Law has made an extraordinary effort to deliver what they promised," says Fulton. "They were committed to the goal and they did the job."

For more information, contact Jeff Cargin, Law's GIS technical manager (tel.: 770-421-3400, E-mail: jcargin@lawco.com) or visit www.law-usa.com.

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