Collaboration

Olivier Perrin, Head of ATM Virtual Centre at Skyguide, has been responsible for aligning air traffic control (ATC) operations within the Virtual Centre Tranche 2 (VCT2) programme. He explains how VCT2 has required a very different approach to introducing new air traffic management (ATM) systems and procedures.

The technology department had to transform its work methodology and switch to Agile. How did operations staff view this approach, which would have been unfamiliar to many, and how did the relationship between engineering and operations evolve during the programme?

The intense work between the engineering and operational teams was significantly influenced by the introduction of Agile working methods. We have, of course, managed the introduction of new automated technology before but it took a while for operations staff to become used to this new way of working, both from technology and business viewpoints. The establishment of an operational core team with specialists dedicated to the Virtual Centre initiative helped by fostering collaboration between experts of different backgrounds. Operations staff gradually came to understand the new way of defining operational requirements based on multiple iterations, early prototyping and regular demonstrations of working software to the end users. It took a while for us to understand the benefits of Agile but we have all come to like working this way. Senior operational staff had to get used to working in a minimum viable product (MVP) mindset, where we deploy value incrementally and in small steps to reach the MVP first and then improve it step-by-step. It took some time to get used to this new philosophy. Operational experts came to realize that not all the features they wanted could be delivered in one go, but they would be delivered incrementally. At the same time, things that we thought we would need at the start of the programme we found out we didn’t really need; but other features that we didn’t anticipate would be required eventually became part of the concept. In traditional ATM engineering you start out with a defined set of requirements and after five years you sometimes find they have not been delivered. But working in an iterative Agile way made these deviations more visible right from the beginning and we could implement early changes.

How were air traffic controllers (ATCO) trained to work on, and become familiar with, the new system?

The RASIM-CH project is a national ATCO working position radar simulator and has been at the core of our innovation journey, as new concepts and ideas could be prototyped, tested and developed on this new architecture. This infrastructure acted as a powerful enabler for many further developments of VCT2. And this is also the platform we are using to train our operational ATCOs on new procedures and tools.

The idea of location-independent ATC operations is central to VC – how easy was it to introduce that concept when Geneva and Zurich ATC centres had different human machine interface (HMIs) and ways of working?

The two centres have been brought much closer together through the VCT2 endeavour. It became clear early on that harmonization of working methods and processes was unavoidable if we were to realize the benefits of the Virtual Centre. Instead of applying the methods and tools of one centre to the other, ATC functional harmonization was achieved by developing new concepts based on customer needs, such as the flexibility to choose preferred trajectories. So the New Route Handling (NRH) concept was developed which, from an operational viewpoint, proved to be a strong driver of harmonization and innovation.

Although the focus for VCT2 was on the systems and equipment we were also aware of the significant gap between the two centres in terms of working methods and tools, so it was vital to introduce NRH, and this at the start of the programme. It was a long journey and has slightly complicated the work, but it was worth it: recently we invited Geneva controllers into the simulator to manage airspace above Zurich – and Zurich controllers to manage Geneva airspace – they all appreciated it and finally found it easier than expected because they were both using the same NRH tools.

Location independence is at the core of the Virtual Centre concept, so in the future a controller will be able to manage any sector of Swiss airspace independently from his or her physical location. If we want to balance demand and capacity, we will soon be able to do this at a national, rather than regional level, which gives us more flexibility to adapt to changing conditions.

We needed a new way to allocate sector management responsibility and developed the Operational Configuration Management (OCM) tool to do this. This tool will be at the interface of our technical and operational service delivery layers in the future, and it constitutes a cornerstone of our Virtual Centre programme. The full benefits of OCM will only be realized once the location independence foundations are completed, but it is now fully integrated into our operational systems. The technical foundations have now been laid and the full operational benefits will be harvested with the VC touchdown phase.