Fort Worth engineering firm gets DFW Airport design contract for Terminal C makeover

Gordon Dickson
·4 min read
Cars wait for travelers at a terminal at DFW airport on Dec. 23, 2020.

DFW Airport leaders are ready to begin a multimillion-dollar makeover of Terminal C, and that effort includes hiring a well-known Fort Worth engineering company despite a concern raised by an airport board member.

The airport board last week approved a $65 million contract with Freese & Nichols, a Fort Worth firm with a history of engineering and design work at the airport dating back to the 1970s.

The airport is pressing ahead with an overhaul of Terminal C, which is the only one of DFW’s five passenger terminals that has not been rebuilt and modernized. Even as the airport sets the stage for the Terminal C work, plans to build a new sixth terminal — Terminal F — remain on indefinite hold because the COVID pandemic has dramatically reduced customer demand for air travel.

But the Terminal C improvements are needed because that facility has many features — including ceilings, ventilation and other infrastructure — that are just too old and need to be modernized, airport officials said.

Before the board voted unanimously to approve the contract with Freese & Nichols, board member Bill Meadows of Fort Worth urged other board members during a committee meeting to keep an eye on how the company performs during the term of the contract. The company would provide construction management services for five years, under the contract terms.

Meadows explained that, in 2014 or 2015, Freese & Nichols was under contract to manage the airport’s Terminal Renewal Improvement Program — a $3.1 billion modernization of Terminals A, B and E that included new gates, checkpoints, baggage handling and many other features.

At that time, Meadows said, the airport’s executive staff behind the scenes weren’t totally satisfied with Freese & Nichols’ quality of work.

Meadows didn’t provide other specifics, and said he now approves of hiring Freese & Nichols for the Terminal C project because he has been assured by the airport’s executive staff that the firm is well-qualified this time.

“The staff has assured me they have done extensive background work on this,” Meadows told the board.

When asked for comment, officials at Freese & Nichols responded with a statement.

“We’ve proudly worked with DFW Airport since its inception half a century ago, and we’re excited about the opportunity to partner with them again,” the firm’s statement read. “We look forward to the prospect of working with DFW Airport’s management and staff and thank them for their consideration and confidence.”

Freese & Nichols was hired in 2010 to provide program management services for DFW Airport’s Terminal Renewal and Improvement Program — often referred to as TRIP. Freese & Nichols received a total of $74 million from that original contract plus six annual renewals ending in 2015, according to DFW documents.

On its company website, Freese & Nichols boasts that it had been in important part of design and construction work at DFW Airport all the way back to the airport’s original concept development in the 1960s.

DFW Airport opened in 1974.

During its peak of work at DFW Airport between 2010 and 2017, Freese & Nichols oversaw and coordinated work with 74 company managers, 250 designers and 4,500 construction workers on the airport grounds, according to the company’s website.

Other DFW board action

In additional to the $65 million contract with Freese & Nichols, the DFW Airport board on Thursday also approved a $65 million with Momentum Aviation Partners of Fort Worth.

The two contracts will allow the two firms to overlap their work, to help maintain continuity as the airport moves from one piece of construction work to another, as the design work for Terminal C and other related capital projects at the airport get underway.

The DFW board also approved $75 million in other design contracts with three other firms for Terminal C.

The firms, each of which was awarded $25 million, include: Ghafari Associates LLC of Fort Worth; Gresham Smith of Dallas; and Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc. (HOK) of Dallas. The contracts are for three years, with a possibility of three additional one-year renewals, according to airport records.

The Terminal C work is expected to begin no sooner than next year, and the work likely will take several years, DFW officials said.

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