In the early 1980’s, Denver experienced significant economic growth due to the booming oil, real estate, and tourism industries. The major airport that operated within Denver during that time was the Stapleton Airport. Up to 1970, the Stapleton Airport was able to accommodate the demands of Denver but in subsequent years it was unable to meet the ever growing needs of the city. The Stapleton Airport was seen as a liability and limited the attractiveness of businesses that were swarming to it. Issues with handling high traffic volume, disruptions in connection schedules, and an overall poor airport layout led the city of Denver to decide whether they wanted to expand or replace the Stapleton Airport. A study performed in 1983 …show more content…

Since the city of Denver had no other acceptable proposals and United was going ahead with their own baggage system, BAE won the contract to implement the new airport-wide baggage-handling system at DIA. There were numerous issues that BAE faced in the implementation of their airport-wide baggage system. First, a planning error had occurred that forced fully defined project specifications onto BAE from the outset. BAE was stepping into a project that was already underway and had to change its working structure to conform to the DIA’s project management structure. This proved to be difficult, since each concourse had its own manager and none of them interacted. The new baggage-handling system would cross them all, and the lack of communication and organization between the diverse areas would cause havoc. There was no one in charge to make a final decision that would benefit all areas of the DIA. An additional area of concern for BAE was that construction had already begun on the terminal and concourses. Considerable changes were needed in the overall design of the terminal, and some of the construction already completed would need to be taken down and reinstalled in order to accommodate the new baggage system. Installation of the expanded system was initially anticipated to require around $100 million in construction work.
In October 1992,