The airports nominated for these awards were evaluated against six basic criteria: significant advances in airport security; demonstrated security effectiveness; successful security management; strong leadership; achieving a balance in airport security programs and airport operations; and maintaining public confidence in air travel.
The first couple of categories don't surprise me. BWI is supposedly the TSA model for all airports, so it stands to reason that it would have the latest security advances such as the walk-thru puffers, in-line baggage systems, the Binford 5000 hand-wands, etc. and be the testbed for procedural innovations that eventually become incorporated as changes to the SOP. I'm still curious how the other areas were assessed (leadership, public confidence, balance between airport ops and security, etc). These sound like good grading criteria; I'm just curious how they compared with other airports.
The interesting criterion is the balance between airport security and airport operations. This is, in essence, risk management. What the criterion tells me is that someone is looking at a methodology that allows a reasonable degree of security without hampering overall operations. I don't know if TSA headquarters has embraced this fully, but it's interesting to see this as one of the graded areas.