Public and Institutional Project Case Study

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Challenge

The Burbank Glendale Pasadena Airport Authority received Federal Grant Funds under the Part 150 Program, to execute a Residential Acoustic Treatment Program. This program established contours of aviation noise in cities around the county and including the Cities of Burbank and Los Angeles around the Bob Hope Airport. The program is administered by the FAA, who’s rules dictate the grant process concerning applied acoustic treatments to single family and multi-family residential structures. The Authority hired Wyle Laboratories to implement the program. At the time that Wyle started working on FAA funded acoustic retrofit projects in the 1980s, they had nearly 100% market share. However, in the decade that followed they lost nearly 90% percent of the market and had a reputation of making everything difficult. Wyle was approached by the Burbank Airport Authority who made it clear they were unhappy and looking to make a change. 

Solution

Wyle hired Jack Kozakar to sort out why they were losing market share and why their clients were so unhappy with their services. Jack spent several weeks getting to know their process and the professionals working for them and determined that their team made sense a decade earlier when the science around acoustic improvements and sound transmission ratings was being worked out, however their team made no sense any longer because now that the science was established clients expected an assembly line approach to the problem, and not scientific analysis of each and every challenge. Jack advised Wyle to get out of the business of construction and focus on science where their team was best suited – that or develop a separate department of construction professionals to implement the project. 

Results

Wyle took Jack’s advice and from 2000 to 2005 engaged him to manage all project implementation in Southern California (ultimately totaling 4,100 projects). In addition to creating a regional design and construction management office, hiring and training 22 architects and designers and13 construction managers, Jack managed up to 20 million dollars per year of expenditures, re-wrote the technical specifications for the program, and turned around program popularity. Jack increased program output at Burbank to 900 projects per year. Jack’s programs and methodologies were referenced by FAA inspectors to other programs and the model for program management. Eventually Jack was involved in programs as far reaching as Allentown Pennsylvania, Key West Florida and Seattle Washington; as well as programs closer to home including County of Los Angeles, City of Inglewood, Los Angeles World Airport, and the Ontario Airport.