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BAGGAGE    
July | August 2026      AirportImprovement.com
BWI
The system went live on Oct. 15, 2025, 
initially with partial inputs, and was 
subsequently expanded to full operation as 
additional tie-ins were completed. Testing 
results demonstrated high reliability and read 
rates, confirming the system’s performance, 
reports Cesar Juarez, senior field engineer 
with VTC. 
Once the new baggage handling 
infrastructure was complete and operating, the old spaces for 
checked bag resolution and inspection were gutted and rebuilt 
as office space for Southwest. 
Major Takeaways
A key lesson from the project was the critical importance of 
close collaboration among stakeholders, facilitated by a shared 
BIM (Building Information Modeling) system and frequent virtual 
workshops—a practice accelerated by the pandemic. 
“There really has been great collaboration 
and coordination among the entire design 
team and construction contractors,” remarks 
Bill Allen, VTC project manager, adding that 
the regular meetings continue as the project 
wraps up. 
“The ability to work directly with the various 
design team discipline leads has allowed for 
timely, collaborative resolutions throughout 
the entire project,” states Joe Emery, 
Studdiford project manager.
This collaborative approach enabled the 
team to resolve clashes and interferences 
early, resulting in a highly coordinated and 
efficient installation, reports McConnell. 
“Having both the design team and the 
construction team in the same BIM 
environment was not only beneficial, but crucial for this project, 
as there was a lot of existing legacy infrastructure that had to be 
coordinated around or relocated in many instances,” he notes. 
For example, it proved invaluable to have a clear picture of 
existing conditions when crews had to relocate a large cable tray 
cutting through the middle of the system at fairly low elevation. 
In resolving that and other challenges, the project team delivered 
a new baggage system with inline screening that can process 
3,255 bags per hour—a significant increase over the previous 
2,100 bags per hour. “Really what we’ve got is a system that can 
basically process as many bags as the main lines can deliver,” 
McConnell says. “There’s not really a throttle within the system.” 
With growth always in mind, the airport designed and built 
a system with flexibility, extra square footage and contingency 
measures built in to accommodate future increases and changes 
in airline operations. “You want to build something you can 
expand,” Shank advises. “And this is expandable.” 
“We were a little bit at the mercy of the column spacing and 
some of the existing structure,” McConnell relates. “You won’t find 
a generic column spacing or even overhead height in the space. 
Everything is unique.” But collaboration within and between the 
design and construction teams produced preemptive solutions.
“Having Clark and Siemens on early, they were able to look 
at the site and provide some feedback and findings that could 
be an issue and circumvent those,” he adds. “It had to be a 
collaboration.”
Lessons learned during the airport’s 2011 recapitalization 
project about the logistics of getting EDS machines in and out 
of the space proved helpful during this subsequent expansion. 
“We have some pretty challenging column lines and structural 
considerations,” McConnell explains. “Ultimately, we found that 
feeding the machines from the plan south to the plan north 
gave us the most flexibility.” 
While the existing system remained operational, the project 
team focused on installing and testing the new equipment. “When 
we started to look at how to tie in and integrate the systems, 
that’s where it got a little bit more difficult,” McConnell recalls. 
Integration was performed in phases, with induction and 
sortation tie-ins executed one group at a time, providing 
operational redundancy and minimizing risk. 
BILL ALLEN
JOE EMERY
CESAR JUAREZ

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