The Super Bowl is super big: 100,000 travelers descend upon the host city, generating half a billion dollars. Another 140 million fans watch on screens.

But compared to the FIFA World Cup, the Bowl is a bantam. “They said, ‘Imagine nine Super Bowls,’” says Vincent Lewis with a chuckle. “That’s the magnitude they anticipate.”

Lewis (B.C.E. ’99) serves as the assistant director of capital infrastructure and development for the City of Dallas Department of Aviation—a giant title for a giant job. Lewis leads the team responsible for construction and improvement projects at Dallas Love Field, one of the busiest domestic airports in the country. Those projects can range from rebuilding runways to tweaking fonts on airport signs. And all the while, his department keeps the airport running smoothly and safely while the work is underway.

In a nutshell? He makes the planes run on time—even during construction, and especially in the face of the 2026 international soccer games, nine of which will be played in the Dallas area.

On the day we spoke, his calendar included a meeting with an advance team from the Argentinian consulate, in town to scope out air logistics. Similar discussions land every week or two in the buildup to the June games. Also on his radar are several major improvements that must be completed in advance of FIFA: runway safety upgrades to two taxiways and a new Aircraft Rescue and Fire Station to replace an aging structure at the facility.

Come summer, special flights in and out of Love Field will surge as teams, visitors, and the world press descend upon Dallas for FIFA, and much of Lewis’s time is consumed with preparing for the big event.

“We’re trying to make sure that we have everything in queue for a smooth transition for international flights and fans,” Lewis says.

Social engineering

Newton had his apple. Lewis, potholes.

He traces his fascination with civic infrastructure to the streets of his native Chicago. Lewis’s father worked for the sanitation department, which gave him a firsthand appreciation of the city’s vital functions. Services like garbage collection, stormwater management, and street maintenance are hidden in plain sight—notable only when absent. And from a young age, Lewis noted their absence in his community.

“Coming from a low-income neighborhood, the streets were in really bad condition all the time,” he remembers. In colder climates, streets need regular maintenance, or potholes will take over. “So you have potholes throughout the city, but you would go to certain neighborhoods where they didn’t have that situation as bad. I wanted to know why. Why is this neighborhood holding up better than the one I live in?”

Lewis found answers in a history of politics, racism, and redlining that still shapes today’s urban environment. Even if resources are distributed equitably today, he says, the physical mark of past policies persist.

“If the West Side is always getting certain things, and the East Side gets the crumbs and now you want to balance it out, they’ll never catch up,” he says. “You’ll never get full completion with an equal share, because somebody’s had a running five- or ten-year head start.”

At the same time, Lewis discovered that if civil engineering is invisible, its results are anything but. Even something as mundane as a bond letting, wielded by a fair-minded engineer, can result in positive change and equity.

“As an engineer, you can invest in those communities to make sure they get the best quality product,” he says. “You want to provide those services for anybody that you work for.”

Broad horizons

Lewis can thank his mother for nudging him toward the University of Minnesota’s civil engineering program. Originally, he’d considered joining high school friends at the University of Illinois. “My mom talked me out of it,” he says. “Separate from your friends; you can always visit them. It’s an opportunity to expand.”

He took her words to heart and seized every chance to expand his horizons. From the start, Lewis sought a broad understanding of the field. “I wanted to make sure I knew a little bit of everything,” he says, explaining his decision to study general civil engineering rather than a specialty.

Like many students on the research campus, he was inspired by proximity to the real work of scientists.

He interned at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, which focuses on research in fluid mechanics, hydrology, and earth-surface dynamics, and where he remembers the soundtrack to his internship as the incessant thunder of a concrete-testing experiment. “Those projects are really what opened my eyes up. Those things are what sparked me.”

On his journey to the aviation sphere, Lewis had a few layovers. Out of college, he landed at the Texas Department of Transportation, then transitioned to the City of Dallas where he worked in the stormwater division, helped deliver a major recycling facility in the sanitation department, spent time in the public works department, and eventually landed in the city’s Bond and Construction Management Office, working on large-scale bond-funded capital projects.

By this point, he was in talks with a neighboring municipality for a director position, when he got a recruitment call from the Department of Aviation. “I’d never considered aviation. Not once. But I said I’ll try it and see,” he says. “I got over here and fell in love, honestly.”

Taming the chaos

As a student, Lewis loved the way math problems sequenced step-by-step to a solution. “It’s black and white. It’s not subject to interpretation,” he explains. “As long as you follow the rule, you’ll get the right answer, and that made it easy for me.”

These days, he still finds structured solutions to engineering problems on the ground—they’re just on a much more complicated scale.

Dallas Love Field operates under limits unique to the airport and its history. Unlike its larger neighbor, Dallas-Fort Worth International, Love Field is permanently capped at 20 gates — a restriction rooted in decades-old political wrangling. Growth can’t come from adding flights or expanding the terminal footprint. Instead, every improvement unfolds within tight physical and regulatory boundaries. Runways and taxiways must operate at peak capacity during construction. Passenger traffic can’t slow, and federal aviation rules govern everything from safety zones to funding. And because Love Field sits in the middle of established neighborhoods, even truck routes and staging areas require community coordination.

For Lewis, these constraints are what make the job interesting. “It’s the fact that you have to stay operational, keep the planes coming in and out, and move traffic, let alone weather or any other condition. You have to accommodate the passengers,” he says. “It’s the chaos of it, and we’re trying to create order. I love to come up with solutions—some of them on the fly with contractors or designers.”

As if the World Cup didn’t offer him enough chaos to manage, he’s facing down a massive reconstruction program that breaks ground immediately after the last soccer fan is sent packing.

This $2.5 billion modernization effort will touch virtually every aspect of the airport’s infrastructure: terminal space, baggage systems, parking garages, airfield facilities, a bump-out to accommodate more passenger lounge space—“everything in and around the airport that we can do without modifying the number of gates,” Lewis explains.

Many phases depend on the others, meaning construction must be sequenced carefully to avoid disrupting passenger flow, airline operations, and safety standards. And because Love sits tight in a Dallas neighborhood, community relations are a constant part of the work.

All that sounds like heaven to Lewis. The boy who once wondered why one Chicago street held up better than another now oversees the pavement designed to withstand, day after day, 75 tons of speeding metal.

But for Lewis, it’s never just about the concrete, or even the chaos. It’s about people. “As an engineer,” he says, “you’re serving them.”

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