Aviation and air traffic control consultancy

By SAL Consultants

Shrives Associates Ltd, incorporated in 1985, trades under the title SAL Consultants. The consultancy has expanded its portfolio from Air Traffic Control specialisations including airspace and ATC simulation, to add airport airside design and development, and more recently, the design and specification of Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facilities.

The core management team comprise experienced members covering: International Financial Services, Air Traffic Control, Airport civil engineering and MRO design. This team can call upon a further group of approximately sixty experts in widely varying fields of aviation from airport lighting to helicopter maintenance.

We supply specific expertise to Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP), Airport Owners, and large engineering consultancies world-wide, and have in recent times been involved in North and Central Africa, Jordan, Taiwan, India, Ecuador, Dubai and several projects in the UK.

Project process
Aviation is under increasing stress, whether searching for less delay, direct routing and improved system capacity. The current financial climate when combined with the global warming fashion is an additional pressure to be taken into account. The Industry has recognised that the typical gestation period for new aircraft and airports can be measured in years, if not decades in some specialist arenas, and that this current world recession is likely to recede within lesser period of time. If a certain constancy of development is not adhered to, then we face increasing congestion and cost pressures as the financial climate returns to normal.

The financial pressure on the designer for new projects will certainly increase as demands are made to provide the maximum possible for the minimum cost whilst remaining within the existing safety management structures. One aspect that often appears to be overlooked is the necessity to view the projected project in the total environment as a bird’s eye view. The creation or development of an airport often ignores the consequences upon the airspace capacity of the region together with the effects upon the ATC service provider. Surrounding building structures, whether industrial or domestic, may also lead to long term capacity constraints.

A primary cost accelerator is the “wish list”; that is the natural pressure to have all the latest bells and whistles for the project. It is perhaps for the development consultant to convert the “what I think I the project needs” to “what I know the project requires”. This can only be successfully achieved if there is a mutual trust developed between the service provider/owner and the consultancy.

Our Approach
The company bid for and won a project to represent an international bank that was financing the modernisation of a country’s ATC infrastructure and wished to employ a consultancy to oversee the specification and international tendering process in coordination with the service provider. This developed into a complex task in talking through the current alternatives available in industry for computer systems and radar, the relative advantages and weaknesses of the alternative design bases in the context of the traffic to be handled and then incorporating their wishes into the operational requirements and functional specifications that were to form the basis for the call for tender.

Following contract award, one of our consultants was nominated to act as the project manager to oversee the installation and to eventually sign off the project on completion. The funding bank was to be kept informed at pre-agreed intervals so that stage funding could be met. The Factory and Site acceptance tests were successful and the training of the technical staff continued throughout the implementation.

It was following the Site Acceptance Test that it became clear that the controllers had not received a sufficient allocation of training. The operational staff were not used to computers or the functions of the mouse as no-one had PCs at home. This required a rapid review of skills transfer as a few of the support staff would be required to customise and input much of the flight plan data as well as to modify routes and navigation aid points. It was decided to develop an almost one-to-one relationship to train up this small team; the time available to achieve this was just over one week, but by  that stage, two core people had been placed to customise the flight plan database.

This identification of a system weakness is essential in ensuring the introduction and acceptability of any new complex system as quite often it is the small unrelated aspect that can cause implementation failure. We have occasionally been asked by the implementing companies to assist them in finding means to resolve difficulties between the company and the client.  We have always found an acceptable solution for both sides. The building of trust at an early stage is essential if costs are to be kept down and systems implemented successfully.

Airport Development
SAL Consultants are the lead consultant for a major airport development project in Europe.  The airport is to mainly concentrate as an International Cargo Hub for Northern Europe and the design calls for a global assessment of the needs of the services to be provided by the airport in cooperation with land and sea transport whilst avoiding the overload of the road infrastructure. The railway is planned to feed into the airport thus providing a suitable network to several rail to road connection and delivery points within a 400 kilometre range and to directly link to a container facility at a local sea port. The concept focuses all the cargo handling within a relatively local area maximising the links whether rail, sea or air for both domestic and international traffic. 

The primary objective is the provision of a speedy and efficient handling and transfer of goods at a reasonable cost. The airport facility is being designed to ensure secure and rapid handling whether the cargo is to be transferred air/sea, air/air or air /rail.

At this early stage, there is to be a project risk and environmental assessment to design in both building and transport energy efficiency through high quality insulation and the provision of transport from several staff “feeder” zones. The intention is to minimise road transport in the surrounding road network by the provision of free bus transport for both office and shift working staff.

In addition to the cargo service there is to be a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility together with a training school for apprentices and foreign students.  SAL Consultants have completed the detail design for both facilities and will shortly be writing the specification for the call for tender.

The Gulf
SAL Consultants were involved with some segments of the airspace design for the new Dubai World airport, and during the project became aware of the pressures facing the States in the Gulf region. International traffic transiting between Europe and the vigorously developing States of Asia combine with the traffic landing and departing from the airports of this important region leading to a potential airspace capacity challenge. The traffic growth, when seen in context with the evolving needs of the region, could lead to a growth constraint to the tourist and other business interests.

Whilst it would be natural to examine the airspace and air traffic control aspects of the environment to effect improvements to the capacity, this will not necessarily provide all of the answer to these growing pressures.   However, the ability to digitise and run fast-time simulations on our in-house ATC/airspace simulator can provide alternative scenarios for evaluation.  The system is based upon ISO/IEC 12207 standard which has been used by the company to develop its software products and is recognised by Eurocontrol as reflecting the best practices for all the processes and activities of robust ANS software.  The Human Machine Interface (HMI) is unique using “through addressing” translucent windows to aid rapid decision-making for high levels of traffic and has proved itself in major measured real-time simulation exercises.

The picture demonstrates the layering principle where the background map is overlaid with translucent weather, opaque aircraft data block, translucent data window and cursor.  If required the cursor will address the aircraft data block directly or the navigation aids on the background map.

Fig 1 - ATC Display demonstrating the translucent layer principle

In running the above fast-time simulations, alternative means to transfer traffic between the main area control centres can be measured to propose the most efficient methodology.  It is likely that some form of flexibility may need to be developed to answer the needs of both the civil traffic and their military counterparts in order to ensure the maximum efficiency for both of their operational needs.

In addressing the airport developments, it is essential to take an almost “holistic” view of their activity and the effects upon the surroundings.  Whilst the aircraft departures and arrivals can be recognised as primary targets for careful design, there are other interfaces requiring similar levels of attention.  The handling of passengers and cargo effectively begins at the home, office or originator of the cargo or for arrivals ending when the passenger arrives at home or office; or in the case of cargo when it is finally delivered at destination.  The constraints to the efficient transport to and from the airport will be the efficiency of the surface transport.  This is already addressed in some areas by utilising speedy passenger rail networks, but cargo may already be limited to a busy road system, just adding to the already congested traffic streams.  For our new international cargo airport development we will be developing railway sidings within the airport boundary to allow for efficient transfer to speedy connections.

Conclusions
SAL Consultants can provide expertise built upon a global experience with our people, able to cover most aspects of system design and iterative fast and real-time simulation testing.  The simulator is also used to customise the data and highlights required for the new systems.

We believe in the importance of developing a close and trusting relationship which encourages detailed discussion and definition of requirements to build the Functional Specification as the basis for successful tender action.

We have World-wide experience of monitoring the implementation of the systems combined with an ability to work with the customer while encouraging the contractor to build the system according to the specification, providing design solutions where required.  We also monitor the Factory Acceptance Tests, Site Acceptance Tests, Technical and Operational Acceptance to the final operational trials for system introduction for formal project signing off.

Our appointment as the lead consultancy for the new North European Cargo Hub demonstrates our spread and depth of expertise combined with our world-wide network of contacts in the aviation industry.

Contact details:
Douglas Spragg, CEO
T: +44 (0)1559 389007, E: info@sal.aero, W: www.salconsultants.com