Airside v Landside

As a broad rule I do not volunteer for much . I do have a willingness to help out if the request comes out of a difficult situation or where an organisation is left in the lurch through no fault of their own. I am a supporter of promoting my profession in Surveying as a worthy pursuit and at least to woo away those who may otherwise end up as lawyers or accountants. So, I suspended my rule by agreeing to take part in an overseeing role at the local High School for what was called an 'inter schools airport challenge'. I had no idea what to expect although was assured by the organisers that I would be part of a team including professionals who had experience of what was likely to be involved in something called an airport challenge. I had, at that time only actually been to a couple of airports myself and half of these occasions were simply to collect someone from arrivals without even entering the main building or indeed seeing or hearing an aircraft. I put on my smartest suit, brightest shirt and clean shoes for the day and felt reasonably confident to be playing an assisting role to those who knew what they were doing. It was a day out of the office, in some form of public service and with the promise of a buffet lunch. I expected to coast along quite nicely basking in the glory of others and to be revered by association by the participating students. The competition was between 5 schools from the area and over the age group 15 to 17. Each team had  brought along a member of their own staff as leader and supervisor. The assembly hall was quite crowded and noisy in anticipation. I was quickly taken to one side upon my arrival to be informed that I was to be the only professional attending following a series of unfortunate events and double-bookings by the real experts who, at very short notice, had cancelled. I was mortified. I was going to be rumbled, found out and exposed as the fraud that I truly now accepted to be the case. One saving grace was that the competition was being run simultaneously in other county schools and as such did have a formal briefing pack and rules of playing. It was a bit like Monopoly but with runways, terminals, control tower and concessions. My role was to be on hand to advise on any queries or design aspects from the students. I would have a roving brief being centrally based in the hall and able to respond to any calls for assistance. The competing schools were all from affleunt areas so I reasoned that the students had regularly holidayed abroad and would be very familiar with the larger UK and continental airports making my job much easier. Equipped with a huge sheet of paper, about advertising hoarding size, and multicoloured pens the teams had first to sketch out a plan of their proposed airport from the carpark to the boarding gates. This was under strict budgetary controls and allowances for each sub-element. Interestingly but not altogether surprising for the age group a couple of the teams were nearly bankrupt from the start by blowing a good proportion of their budget on landside facilities including games arcades, record and CD shops, fashion and coffee shops. This was to the detriment of providing adequate airside customs facilities, baggage handling areas, check-in desks and duty free outlets. The terminology of landside and airside did initially cause some confusion in my mind and to the majority of the students. I ranged about the hall, by now trying to look like a politician amongst his electorate with jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up. Just as seen on TV it was not at all cool.
Progress was good by lunchtime and I had been able to fudge most direct questions quite well. There were not quite gasps of admiration from those assembled but my comments on waste bins, or more particularly their absence from airport concourses because of security considerations went down as though I knew what I was doing. I was off duty for the lunch-break but was approached by staff members curious about a career in the world of aviation which, to outsiders, may look quite an attractive job but I assured them that it had its downsides but I was very non-specific about what these were. A roll of the eyes and a wink is a good substitute for actual meaningful conversation. The afternoon session flew by and by 3pm I was asked to summarise the challenge to date before final submissions and presentations by the teams. My final role was to adjudicate and determine an overall winner. There was not a lot of difference between all the teams in their submissions and rationale so my decision would be quite difficult. My final order of merit actually came down to tidyness and neatness of the plans and written workings. I made a final speech about how well everyone had applied themselves to a complex project and that if I did ever get asked to design and build an airport I would have no hesitation about sourcing a team from those present. I did not hang around at the conclusion of the day. As I drove out of the school gates dodging the hordes of homegoing pupils I found myself having a running dialogue with the control tower as I was cleared for take-off.