Technical Communication at Toronto Pearson International Airport

by Scott Russell, Quill Contributor

Drinking from a fire hydrant, that’s how it felt when I started work at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 2002. Toronto Pearson is Canada’s busiest airport, handling more than 40 percent of the country’s air traffic. Named 28th busiest airport in the world, Toronto Pearson served approximately 24.7 million passengers last year.

Re-development Project

While maintaining daily operations, the airport authority was in the midst of redeveloping airport facilities with the largest construction project in Canadian history: a decade-long, $4.415 billion (CAD) plan. The construction projects include:

• the construction of new Terminal 1, built with enough concrete for two CN Towers and enough steel for three-and-a-half Eiffel Towers, containing 390,000 square metres of floor space;
• the largest parking facility in Canada, an eight-storey, 12,600-space intelligent garage that reports vacant spaces to customers;
• an improved 350-acre infield cargo area, including a new 10-gate terminal; and
• a simplified roadway access with 64 bridges and the equivalent of 84 kilometres of single-lane roadway, including one-and-a-half kilometres of Highway 409, purchased from the province.

Documentation Plan

To successfully activate these new facilities, the airport authority hired its first five technical writers. As one of these five, I was tasked with managing three documentation projects, each of which resulted in a book-length Plan of Operations. To obtain senior manager buy-in, I developed and distributed documentation plans, including Content Specifications with sample tables of contents and estimated page counts. This helped authority managers define the scope of the projects and anticipate costs.

Content Development

Thereafter, I developed content by supporting five committees. I set their agendas, invited key participants, took minutes, and maintained issue logs. Where new programs or services were required, I helped senior managers capture their requirements. I wrote three Request for Proposals documents. I also tore through vendor documentation and interviewed authority managers, line workers, and vendor representatives.

Documentation Design and Process

While content was being developed, the technical writers met regularly to define document design requirements and review the template builds as we progressed. I was tasked with developing FrameMaker and Word templates, the style guide, and a global glossary of approved nomenclature. Other writers developed the documentation process and workflow forms for managing issues, performing peer edits, proofing print, and capturing print specifications. I was one of the LiveLink local-content administrators who set up and maintained our electronic workspaces on two instances of the application: one for internal use and the other for sharing approved files with the airport community.

Training Programs

Draft plans of operations were vetted by technical experts of the authority and reviewed by senior managers for final approval. After initial publication and distribution of the plans of operations to the authority, airlines, and key contractors, 154 different training courses were developed and delivered to explain new facilities, systems, and equipment, resulting in more than 5,000 hours of instruction. I developed and delivered 10 of those training programs and three sets of related job aids to support the operations I documented. Training compliance was tracked by a technical writer using reports generated from an Access database that were distributed online using a conversion macro.

Trials Program

The trials program consumed many of the technical writers as the process called for the development of five deliverables for each trial and the management of at least three meetings per trial where key participants and witnesses in the authority and in the airport community reviewed and approved the planning documents. Of the more than 30 trials scheduled, I was tasked with planning, scripting, and reporting on the outcome of six of them. These trials were developed to test the utility of the procedures documented in the plans of operations and the effectiveness of the training delivered.

More than 1,400 volunteers participated in the trials program. Additionally, hundreds of authority staff, airline employees, and contractors ran through their duties in the new facilities using the new systems and equipment. More than 7,500 bags were used to test the baggage system, weighed down with tonnes of used books and paper.

Issues Management

The trials program identified nearly 1,200 issues that required corrective action. More than 200 of these issues were named show stoppers and were corrected before Opening Day. Technical writers tracked these issues using an Access database and reported their status daily to managers of the authority. Some trial outcomes required Plans of Operations to be updated or modified, and some training courses had to be refined and repeated.

Opening Day

Air Canada apron workers unload baggage from an
Airbus A320 as the sun rises over the new
Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

After more than two years, the five technical writers had become 12, and the new facilities were successfully activated. Opening Day of new Terminal 1 on April 6, 2004, was a great success, unlike the experiences of other airport facility activations such as those in Denver, Athens, and Hong Kong.

It was truly rewarding to stand in the new terminal while the first customers walked through the doors that day. To see their smiles, to follow their darting eyes, to hear the roar, to feel the bristling excitement was a realization of all the work we had done. It was our shoe-clap applause. It was a day when drinking from the fire hydrant satisfied.

You can also learn more about airports by learning some of their initialisms and acronyms.

About Scott Russell

Scott Russell has worked at Toronto Pearson International Airport since 2002 after graduating with Honours from the Technical Communication program at Seneca College. Previously, a newspaper reporter/photographer, Scott enjoys teaching Yoshinkan Aikido and leading Wolf Cub Pack meetings.