Overview
Improve energy efficiency and sustainability at Atlanta airport and impact the industry by promoting successes. Concurrently, there was a need to develop a formalized asset management program to support capital investments over the short term and long term, which support the efficiency and sustainability goals.
Reason for Action: The airport had set a goal of improving energy and water efficiency, reducing costs, and improving its sustainable place in the aviation industry. The asset management function had opportunities to utilize the total cost of ownership to make capital investment decisions. This is also an industry issue, so lessons learned are shared with industry around the world.
Challenges: Establish an energy management program and systems to support continuous improvement toward reaching efficiency and sustainability goals. There were no management systems or technological infrastructure.
Charles is an international energy manager with asset management responsibilities recognized as a Fellow member with the Association of Energy Engineers for significant contributions to the energy industry. Charles lead the airport along with the City of Atlanta to implement its first energy savings performance contract, which is improving building management systems and retrofitting lighting to LED. Leading the asset management team for the airport, he is formalizing the asset management program by working toward ISO 55000 certification.
One milestone to handle the data management issue was to develop a data mart, which pulls the data elements such as utilities, maintenance, leases, project information, and other data on assets to produce information, which produced a 10-, 20-, and 30-year capital investment program. He has spoken on energy and sustainability issues in conferences around the world. He also has written several articles that encourage and promote best practices and thoughtful reflection in the energy and environmental industry. He recently served as an ambassador for the Southern Region for the Airport Cooperative Research Program with the Transportation Research Board under the National Academy of Sciences and is supporting the program as an ambassador emeritus.
He lead the first U.S. airport — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest airport with more than 104 million passengers annually — to certification under the ISO 50001 Energy Management Standard. He was part of the organizing team of the airport's ecodistrict, which is the first airport ecodistrict in the world and currently leading the team to certification under the ecodistrict protocol. He has won numerous awards in energy management for his service and contribution to the industry.
Currently, he is the asset management team leader for the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and he is the treasurer elect and sustainability/community service committee chair for the International Facilities Management Association Atlanta chapter. He serves on the Emory University’s Creation, Religion, Ethics, and the Environment (CREATE) program advisory council. He served as a panel member with the Airport Cooperative Research program which created the 1st water strategies for U.S. Airports.
He serves on the Georgia Tech Advisory Committee for Atlanta RCE in education for sustainable development. He is actively working to make a difference in asset management, energy efficiency and sustainability around the world while improving facilities at the airport
In-house Participants
Tanita Toatong- no longer with us but much appreciated; Aaron Davis - no longer with us but much appreciated; Denise Brookins - no longer with us but much appreciated; Many other stakeholders and departments have supported our efforts. Airport leadership has been very supportive in our efforts. Some are still with the airport and other have moved to other interests. External organizations such as Delta Airlines and Allied Aviation also have supported our efforts
