By Michael Canon,
Chief Commercial Officer, Dubai Aviation City Corporation

Many local communities have adopted a global view of their economies and have decided to attract foreign direct investment. They have examined their assets and have looked at the strategies of other cities. They see that airport cities are drivers of foreign direct investment. Companies are seeking multimodal platforms for their supply chain operations.

Many studies have shown that airports alone, however, are insufficient to attract the investments of companies wanting to serve global markets. airport cities are subject to the rules and constraints of their cities, states, and countries and they are taken into account by corporate strategists who determine where the next manufacturing plant or distribution center will be.

There are many indices available that explain what makes cities attractive to foreign direct investment. There is the World Bank Report on Ease of Doing Business and the Logistics Performance Index, The AT Kearney Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index, and multiple university studies on the same issue. They have identified population size, proximity to markets, availability and cost of skilled labor, natural resources, political stability, fiscal policy, the ease of doing business, among other things, as the important characteristics of markets the companies are seeking.

Outside the realm of airport cities, however, there is little discussion of the importance of connectivity of the hard and soft infrastructure and the speed and predictability this infrastructure must have in its operations for an airport city to be as attractive as possible. The hard infrastructure of the roads, rail, air, and sea and telecommunications can all be present, and the soft regulatory infrastructure can be written and implemented, but if these are not managed as a single process with the proper measurement system in place then the system runs the risk of tumbling, stumbling and failing. When this happens speed and predictability suffer. Connectivity becomes irrelevant.

This multimodal cargo handling system must have connectivity with speed and predictability for the global supply chains to operate. The seamless transfer of cargo between modes is critical. Unfortunately, many 3PLs, 4PLs, and freight forwarders do not have the measurement systems necessary to ensure their clients shipments arrive where they need to arrive, when they need to arrive, and at the total delivery cost they must have for their customers to be competitive. Many of the failures of their processes are related to the operation and management of this process.

So what does all this have to do with airport cities? Can airport leaders influence the operation of the hard and soft infrastructure so that the multimodal cargo handling system is as fast and predictable as possible? Should airport leaders assume the position of the drivers for public-private partnerships to improve speed and predictability?

Many airports are.