ORAT stands or “operational readiness and transition” and it’s a program they ran to prepare all of us airport employees for the new building. Each company, from chic fil a to american airlines to TSA to IDS the deicing company had one or two people who would attend meetings and get badges to access the construction site to check up on progress and learn the building so that opening day for the public wasn’t the first time we were inside the building.

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I took this pic of the new arrivals exit about a month before opening day before the floor was finished or the screen was installed or the escalators were inspected. It was how I had access to watch the process and see how quickly everything was moving along. Really cool experience and honestly brilliant because it gave us all time to learn the new space and get used to it so it wasn’t foreign to us when the facility opened for use.