CREATING EXTRAORDINARY PROGRAM AND PROJECT OUTCOMES AT SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL

by: Sue Dyer
published: AAAE Airport Magazine, April/May 2016 Issue

San Francisco International’s director for the past 20 years, John Martin (retired) led the airport’s transformation into a world-class global entity widely praised and emulated in the aviation industry.*

The airport in 2015 welcomed a record 50 million passengers and was the fastest growing airport for international travel in the country. In the past 13 years, SFO has attracted 25 new international carriers. The airport regularly has one of the highest, if not the highest, spending per passenger in the country and has garnered dozens of awards for its programs dealing with design, food and beverage, sustainability, safety  and security and guest services. Martin credits much of the airport’s success to his team and his staff’s unwavering dedication to Collaborative Partnering, which he said produces cohesion, alignment and commitment. The airport began by partnering on its construction projects and, seeing the enormous value in the process, began promoting it as a culture change process and extended it to all airport programs.

The six steps outlined below in the Collaborative Partnering Hierarchy show the ways in which San Francisco has utilized the Collaborative Partnering process:

The Collaborative Partnering Hierarchy
Collaborative Partnering has a hierarchy, with each level building on itself. It works best if you start at the bottom of the pyramid and work your way up. This is the path that SFO has taken over the past 20 years. As you move up the hierarchy, you are building momentum toward achieving extraordinary outcomes. The Collaborative Partnering processes for each step have been designed to support the growth of momentum. It is like putting a nozzle on a garden hose. The more you narrow the focus of the nozzle, the more force and momentum the water has when it comes out. This is what has happened at San Francisco.

The airport has built a tremendous amount of momentum. To do this, officials made collaboration the norm, so now it is the existing culture. Twenty years after the journey began, innovation and momentum are expected, and SFO is achieving extraordinary program outcomes (EPO).

On the right side of the Collaborative Partnering Hierarchy, you see that you also can build entropy, if you don’t do enough to create and maintain alignment. Entropy is expending wasted effort on something that does not move you toward the outcomes that you are working to achieve. Entropy can show up as conflict, misaligned expectations, turf protecting, silos and myriad other ways that distract the team from being focused on its mission.

People will create either momentum or entropy within your organization. So getting everyone focused, aligned and committed is the key. That is what Collaborative Partnering is designed to achieve. A review of each of the steps in the Collaborative Partnering Hierarchy will demonstrate what you can do to start your journey toward EPO.

STEP 1: Gaining Internal Alignment with Collaborative Strategic Planning
The first step is to start developing your internal culture around collaboration. You can’t possibly reach out to others or launch collaborative initiatives and projects when your internal organization’s values are not in alignment with collaboration. The Collaborative Strategic Planning process allows for senior management team members to co-create their organizational values, identify their sustainable competitive advantage and then to organize goals, objectives and structures around them. This focus allows for a high level of commitment to emerge. For SFO, this collaborative approach to developing organizational strategies helped jumpstart the airport’s ability to make collaboration the way it conducts business.

STEP 2: Creating External Alignment – Collaborative Strategic Partnering
The second step is to begin developing strategic partnerships with those other entities that influence your outcomes. Your staff will need to identify the organizations that may be preventing you from successfully achieving your goals. These can be internal, such as departments that are protecting their turf, or work areas where there is confusion or disagreement over roles and responsibilities. Or, it can be with external entities, such as airlines, TSA, FAA or surrounding communities. The Collaborative Strategic Partnering process is designed to develop collaboration and commitment between different entities with a focus on mutual success. San Francisco has utilized this process to deal successfully with third parties to roll out a new accounting system and to handle noise abatement issues and  environmental requirements. SFO also has used this very effectively to build alliances with cities, regulators, the  airlines and other organizations that are essential to the success of the airport.

STEP 3: Providing Project Alignment – Structured Collaborative Project Partnering
The third step is to bring collaboration to all of the various entities that must come together to undertake a project. Every airport focuses on its facilities. At San Francisco, the focus is on the $5 billion building program that is underway. Structured Collaborative Project Partnering is being used and yielding significant results. Partnering is yielding cost savings in the range of 20 percent-30 percent per square foot over other aviation projects. There has not even been a potential claim in a decade. The process primarily is used on facilities projects but also can work on other multi-party projects such as information technology or research and development.

STEP 4: Expanding to Program Alignment – Structured Collaborative Program
The fourth step is to roll out the Structured Collaborative Project Partnering to all projects. When owners establish a scalable program across all projects, they are able to ensure that each project has the potential to reach the desired outcomes. In addition, it is essential to monitor the results to enable course corrections and to have program level goals for what you want to achieve. At San Francisco, the airport has a robust partnering program that includes the internal stakeholders, senior management, and project and construction management teams. The program sets out requirements in the specifications and contracts so everyone coming to work on a project understands the expectation that the teams will work in an atmosphere of collaboration. They also use construction scorecards on all large capital projects to ensure that the teams and the executive staff know exactly how each team is tracking on its goals.

STEPS 5 AND 6: Achieving a Culture of Collaboration with Extraordinary Outcomes
Steps five and six emerge as all of the effort you’ve taken in Steps 1-4 assimilate into the values of the organization. Now, collaboration truly becomes the way that you do business, internally and externally, including on initiatives and projects. The CP Values chain (below) shows how the Collaborative Partnering values play out. Working to achieve alignment and focus leads to a sense of cohesion and shared purpose. This allows for the team to tap into the collective wisdom of fellow team members. Innovative ideas emerge that are better than what otherwise would have been possible. As these are implemented, the team gains more and more momentum. Ultimately, this results in Extraordinary Outcomes.

How to Get Started
Martin will be the first to admit that Collaborative Partnering is a journey and not a destination, but it offers great rewards along the way. He said that he started by incorporating some Collaborative Partnering, and it achieved results. He did more Collaborative Partnering and obtained more results. When he fully committed, he achieved extraordinary results.

Many airports seek to use Collaborative Partnering on their capital projects as their first step, and this is good. You also can start with Step 1 and move up the hierarchy. Some organizations undertake Steps 1-3 concurrently. Whatever the approach, you are working to make collaboration the way that you do business. By following these steps, you will become congruent on how you operate internally, externally and on your projects, and this will reduce entropy and lead you to EPO.

* The new Director Ivar Satero has been involved with implementation of the existing Partnering program and is fully committed to continue to foster the positive culture that Collaborative Partnering has helped to develop.