Known as Lindbergh Field, San Diego County Regional Airport is the busiest single-runway commercial airport in the United States, and the second-busiest single-use runway in the world. Traffic at San Diego International exceeds 20 million passengers annually, with more than 500 scheduled operations carrying about 50,000 passengers each day. Currently offering both domestic and nonstop international flights to Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Japan with nonstop service to Germany and Switzerland that started in 2017.
Since 2007, San Diego County Regional Airport has partnered with PlanetBids for their bid management. Under the thoughtful leadership of their purchasing team, the airport transitioned from a paper intensive system, where bid notifications were done by mailed postcards, to an on-line system that expanded their outreach to the vendor community. The benefits have been immense-eliminating manual efforts for mailing costs; reduced time-delaying phone calls and faxes, higher response rates to RFP’s and increased competition and vendor participation.
Procurement previously had to enter bids manually into two different systems. Now, PB System™ does that work for them while coordinating with other internal financial systems. Reports are easily generated and flexible to customize. With federal funding, it is important to note the classifications of vendor participation-from those who receive notifications, to those who respond, and are ultimately awarded the contract. The reports tell it all…and the picture is a good one. The Airport can quickly report on the participation of micro, local, small and disabled veteran owned businesses throughout the recent Green Build project, which has spread the work across these communities. In addition, the Design/Build prime contractors used PlanetBids for their own subcontracting opportunities to share their database and increase their outreach.
The airport’s commitment to supporting small and local businesses continued during the recent $316M Rental Car Center, resulting in about $186M in construction contracts going to local businesses and $70.4M of that portion awarded to small businesses. The results were phenomenal-project savings, increased participation and overall project success.
