Behind the Takeoff with Lyn Estabrook

After earning her degree in architecture, Lyn Estabrook began her professional journey at an architecture firm in Austin, where she played a role in designing government buildings, including the original airport concessions. Over the next decade, she honed her skills at various architecture firms before making a significant shift to the public sector.

In 2008, Lyn joined the City of Austin’s Building Services as a project manager. Her career continued to evolve as she transitioned to the Parks Department, managing capital improvement projects. Her commitment and hard work caught the attention of others, leading to a special assignment in the Office of Sustainability. “When you work hard and do good work, people notice,” Lyn says, emphasizing the importance of dedication in her field.

Most recently, she was promoted to Deputy Chief of Planning and Development in the Department of Aviation, showcasing her ambition and leadership. Lyn is not only passionate about architecture but also about helping her team grow. She finds joy in those “light bulb” moments when a team member discovers a new idea or solution. “I love being able to see a problem and help solve it,” she explains.

At first glance, airports may seem like public utilities, but many are structured to be financially self-sustaining. “We are a city-owned airport, but we make all of the money that we need on campus,” Lyn explains. This means that, unlike other city services, the airport doesn’t receive taxpayer funding. Instead, they rely on the revenue generated from the businesses operating within the airport—chief among them, the airlines.

Lyn’s role in airport planning is all about looking ahead—not just a year or two, but decades into the future. With passenger numbers and flight traffic growing rapidly, Lyn and her team must think in long-term horizons to ensure the airport can meet future demand. “The planning team does a lot of future thinking,” she explains. “They have to look at trends, they have to look at what other airports are doing, and they have to look historically backward to understand where we’ve been.”

One of the biggest adjustments Lyn has had to navigate is the growth in both the size of the planes and the number of flights. The terminal, originally designed for smaller planes, now hosts much larger aircraft flying at full capacity. “The original design was for planes that had 135 people on them, with only 60% of the seats filled,” Lyn says. “But now we’re pushing larger planes, and they’re coming in with 190 people and load factors as high as 100%.”

For Lyn, building an airport is not just about concrete, gates, and terminals. It’s about turning a long-term vision into a reality that will serve millions of passengers for generations to come. As someone who oversees the planning and development of a major airport, Lyn’s work revolves around balancing intricate details with the big picture. At the heart of it all is the master plan, a document that guides the airport’s future expansion.

“All airports have to do what's called a master plan. It's an FAA-required master plan,” Lyn explains. But unlike neighborhood planning, an airport master plan is a highly technical document that sets the framework for everything from taxiways to terminals. “It's more like a use plan,” she adds. “It lays out a concept for what we could do, not exactly how we’ll do it.”

The master plan is a starting point—a vision for what the airport could become. However, translating that vision into a functional airport involves a complex evolution of design, engineering, and construction. “What we're building today is an evolution from that,” Lyn says. Her team moves from the high-level concept of the master plan to detailed construction layouts that take into account building codes, geotechnical reports, and the latest FAA guidelines. “The reality takes the technical requirements and moves them into a design and engineering framework so you can exactly know where the building is going.”

Lyn’s work doesn’t stop at just envisioning the future; she leads her team through every phase of the project, from planning and design to the actual build. “You go through what we call 30, 60, 90,” she explains. At each design milestone—30%, 60%, 90%—the team reassesses the plans, refining them until they’re ready to be built. “At each stage, you review it and get closer to the final result.”

One of Lyn’s key strategies for keeping projects on track and on budget is alternative delivery, which brings contractors into the process early to collaborate with designers. “The contractor is on-site within 45 days of the designer,” she says. “They collaborate on how to build it, faster and more efficiently.” This method not only speeds up the process, but also ensures that quality and practicality are at the forefront.

Lyn’s career in airport planning and development has been a journey of balancing vision with practical execution, and nowhere is this balance more evident than in the intricate world of procurement. At the helm of projects that shape the future of the airport, Lyn plays a crucial role in ensuring that the right teams are selected to bring these massive undertakings to life.

For Lyn, procurement isn’t just about signing contracts; it’s a complex process that can take anywhere from six to nine months. "Procurement is the process of finding and selecting someone to do something," she explains. "In our case, it’s a design team, a construction team, or both."

What makes airport procurement unique is the collaboration with the city’s purchasing office. This department sets the standards and provides templates, ensuring that everything follows specific regulations. "You’ve got to say what you want, what kind of skills you want, and how you’re going to score it," Lyn says. This meticulous attention to detail ensures that only the most qualified teams are considered.

Lyn likens the process to a job interview. The teams vying for a project submit extensive documents, sometimes over 100 pages long, detailing everything from organization charts to their approach to working with partners. Once these submissions are reviewed by a panel, which Lyn makes sure is diverse in expertise, background, and experience, the best teams are selected. "It’s a different panel every time," she notes. "The project manager will be there through the process, but they don’t always score."

Ultimately, once a team is chosen, it still takes months of negotiation before the final agreements are signed and work can begin. For Lyn, every decision, from selecting the design team to approving construction methods, is part of her long-term vision for the airport. Her leadership ensures that each project is not only well-executed but also reflects the future of the airport she’s helping to build.

“Airports are fun because they’re dynamic. If you’re okay with things changing and evolving, it’s fun because you never know in the day-to-day what you're going to be doing,” Lyn says with enthusiasm. That energy and curiosity are what have kept her engaged throughout her career. Lyn loves how the aviation industry is its own little world, with its own set of challenges and innovations. “We’re like a little city,” she explains, “and we’re very self-sustaining.”

Today, she leads with the same vigor she had when she first started. Her message to new employees is simple: “You can do anything here. If you decide, ‘I’m tired of being an admin, I want to go be a finance person,’ go for it!” For Lyn, the aviation industry isn’t just a job—it’s a career full of opportunities to grow, evolve, and thrive.