Long View

So was born the Civil Military Air Traffic Management System (CMATS), which will deliver a harmonised air traffic management system throughout Australia.

Evaluation of tender responses is now in the advanced stages and selection of the preferred systems supplier is expected to occur in the first quarter of 2015. Within Airservices and the RAAF considerable work is underway to transform both organisations, enabled by the capabilities that the system replacement will provide.

We are under no illusion that Onesky is merely a systems replacement program.

“CMATS is the ‘kit’, Onesky is the program to deliver the capability and benefits that CMATS can provide,” explains Jason Harfield, Airservices’ executive general manager future service delivery.

“We are under no illusion that Onesky is merely a systems replacement program. It is more about changing the way we do business. This means that we are committed to delivering a step change in service delivery and maximising the flow-on benefits to the aviation industry, which is enabled by a whole-of-business transformation. This transformation is both world leading and the most complex change in Australian air traffic management history. ” Transition activities have been grouped into four domains – human capability, air traffic management systems, facilities, and activities and dependencies.

Compared to the existing ATM systems operated by Airservices and Defence, Onesky will deliver improved safety, improved operator workload management and improved business continuity and contingency response. Onesky will be implemented in a phased manner during the period 2018 through 2021. Airservices is committed to continuously delivering benefits and performance improvements beyond the end of this transition period.

The financial benefit of a common system replacement is now being quantified.

“The first threshold benefit of having one national air traffic management system is the cost savings of purchasing one system rather than a separate civil and a separate military system. On acquisition alone, in buying one system, the combined savings for both Airservices and Defence is in the order of several hundred million dollars, and that is without the service delivery benefits to users from the new system. ” Harfield said.

In recent years Airservices has introduced a number of ATM system enhancements such as the Metron Harmony pre-tactical flow management system and INTAS (Integrated Tower Automation Suite). To gain the full benefit from these new systems a technological backbone is required that enables the flow of information among the variety of aviation stakeholders.

These stakeholders include airlines, airport operators, meteorological organisations, control towers, air traffic control centres, etc. In an information management context these stakeholders are termed nodes.

CMATS will be the technological backbone for these and other ATM systems. It provides the network connectivity to enable the information exchange between nodes. These nodes are providing and receiving system information.

The underlying notion is for the right information to be provided at the right time to the right organisation to enable optimal decision making.

“While Metron-Harmony and ACE (Airspace Capacity Enhancement) programs have released some latent ATM system capacity, TAAATS will only take us up to a certain point and system performance will plateau. CMATS will provide additional capability to continue these service delivery improvements. For example CMATS will incorporate a more capable integrated arrival and departure management function that will increase the capability to regulate the flow of aircraft entering and operating within the ATM system,” Harfield says.

“CMATS will provide enhanced ATM capability prior to the advances other aviation organisations are making, not after” he adds. “If we consider the new parallel runways being planned for Brisbane and Melbourne, CMATSfunctionality will enable industry to maximise the efficiency of this new infrastructure as it comes online. ” A central component of Onesky is a single flight information region (FIR). At present TAAATS operates two FIRs each with a separate flight data processing system.

Defence also has separate flight data processing systems as part of its ADATS system. A single FIR will enable any operator to access information anywhere in Australia.

Removing the constraints caused by different processing systems and separately managed volumes of airspace enables civil and military airspace to be shared. It also enables the greater use of flexible air routes and the adoption of user-preferred trajectories (UPT), where aircraft can fly on variable routes to takeadvantage of weather conditions or operate in a manner to fulfill other business requirements.

Although the desire to have civil aircraft gain access to military airspace is well publicised, future operations by Defence aircraft will increasingly require greater access to civil airspace. Defence will soon be operating new generation aircraft such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Triton unmanned aerial systems, and it is likely that military airspace will be too small to contain the operational requirements of these aircraft.

The aim is to reduce, not increase restricted airspace around military locations, despite these changing needs. A common ATM system will enable airspace near military bases to be exchanged between defence and civil air traffic controllers.

Supporting the CMATS system functionality will be an increased use of performance-based navigation (PBN) where satellite navigation systems will replace historical terrestrial aids over large areas of continental Australia. Aeronautical information management (AIM) will be upgraded to enable integrated information management. To support the flexible use of airspace and UPT flight, voice communications systems between aircraft and ground locations also need to be assigned in a flexible manner. This will involve the introduction of retransmission networks.

The single FIR provides shared situational awareness and a high level of standardisation for both Airservices and RAAF air traffic controllers. Importantly all air traffic controllers will be operating with the same flight data set. It means that any civil or RAAF controller has the ability to access information throughout the FIR.

From a safety perspective, incidents arising from difficulties in incorporating civil flight data

Airspace near military bases will be exchanged between defence and civil air traffic controllers.

information into the military ADATS system will no longer occur.

In the event of a disaster or service problem at one facility, consoles at other locations can quickly be reconfigured to control the airspace to maintain services.

An Operating Level Agreement (OLA), signed by Airservices and Defence in July 2012, formalised their association for the acquisition and support of a joint ATM system. The agreement defined the procurement process and the contractual framework for the joint civil-military ATM system.

Defence has different requirements for the approval of capital expenditure associated with the acquisition and future enhancement of CMATS. It evaluates this investment over a 20‑year cycle.

Airservices and Defence have agreed cost allocation principles, to ensure the costs associated to each entity is absorbed by that entity. Airservices will be the lead organisation, contracting with the system supplier. A sub-contract will be signed with Defence.

Initial operating capability (IOC) of CMATS is designed to meet the 2018 operational requirements of Airservices and Defence.

“Airservices and Defence did a lot of work to agree the functionality required in CMATS,” Harfield says. “This operational concept was developed with input from civil and military user groups to gain agreement. It defines how the civil and military system components would work as one ‘system of systems’ to deliver services. ” The ongoing evolution of CMATS will be greatly influenced by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) initiatives in the development of Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU). These block upgrades are a framework of flexible and scalable building blocks that can be introduced into a region depending on theneed and level of readiness, while recognising that not all modules are required in all airspaces. Block upgrades are organised into five-year increments. Current system planning indicates that CMATS will need to be enhanced to meet the ASBU changes for 2023 and 2028.

Although the ASBU program is primarily targeted at civil users, it also provides benefits for the Australian military ATM system. It enables Defence to align the navigation capabilities of new generation military aircraft with those of the ATM systems. ASBU also incorporates the interoperability of civil and military ATM system elements.

Having Defence and Airservices operate the same ATM system platform also provides opportunities to reduce duplication in through-life support. Service cost reductions will come from standardised technical support work procedures and practices. This will provide opportunities to rationalise facilities, workforce and other resources. In previous acquisitions, Airservices and Defence have favored contracts with suppliers that cover system acquisition plus an extensive support period. However, due to the complexity, time, cost and organisational upheaval associated with the acquisition and transition to a new ATM system, a trend is emerging for air traffic service providers around the world to enter into long-term strategic relationships with suppliers. In these relationships, software is updated in accordance with a planned development path, and hardware is replaced and upgraded periodically. Airservices and Defence will almost certainly adopt this framework to manage the technical evolution of CMATS.

“Airservices and Defence both agree that an effective long-term working relationship is imperative with our selected system supplier,” Harfield says. “It is highly likely that this will be the last time we embark on a major ATM system replacement project. We expect our relationship with the systems supplier will evolve once CMATS is embedded into operation and we need to enhance its functionality to meet our changing operational requirements. ” In order to incorporate the various enhancements that will need to be incorporated into CMATS, modular systems architecture will be used. This will enable ‘best of breed’ functionality to be added to the core system over time. It will result in Airservices and Defence taking greater responsibility for managing the integration of disparate modular systems into CMATS.

Airservices is a risk-averse organisation that sets demanding standards in commissioning new systems. It is used to transferring system risk to system suppliers. This can often increase the time, effort and costs associated with project implementation. Increased responsibility for systems integration involves Airservices andDefence assuming greater technical risk for the performance of CMATS as new functionality is added to the core system.

A change in the organisational culture will be needed to assume these different responsibilities. The task of cultural change is more complex due to different work philosophies held by various groups of employees within Airservices such as air traffic controllers and technical personnel.

“The transition from TAAATS to Onesky involves addressing cultural elements within the organisation, not just implementing technical changes. For example we want engineers to have a greater focus on operational outcomes, not only the technological inputs,” Harfield explains.

A cornerstone of the cultural change will be the definition of responsibilities and the development of strong leadership. “To reposition the scope of activities performed by Airservices clear definition of roles and responsibilities expected of management and staff is required” says Harfield. “The complexity presented by Onesky requires strong leadership of the people who are responsible for specific activities or functions. We will build our leadership capability through our focus on attaining service delivery outcomes. ” He adds: “For the organisations involved in Onesky the goal is to develop a team approach around delivering the new air traffic management system to the nation. These organisations include Airservices and Defence plus the various systems suppliers. To operate, maintain and evolve the system the organisation that is best place to perform the activity and manage the risk, manages it. Again, each organisation will be assigned clear roles and responsibilities. A new work culture among our employees and the various organisations involved in Onesky will not happen immediately, it will need to evolve with time. We accept that we need to walk before we can run. ” Airservices is continuing to pursue cultural change to engage staff in the organisation’s future to further embed the customer focus and build a team environment. This is part of the program of work aptly named ‘Our People, Our Future’, and is aligned with other initiatives such as a revised leadership development program to set the foundation for the future – planned to commence in 2015.

RAAF and Airservices also have quite distinct cultures anddifferent operational focuses. Airservices provides services to a multitude of mainly civil customers within Australia. The RAAF has a concentration on a single customer that requires a highly customised service. While having local service requirements, the RAAF must also meet deployment obligations into war and disaster zones.

A number of initiatives are taking place to overcome inter-organisational differences. Since 2009 Airservices and RAAF formed a joint steering group, AC-MAC (the Australian Civil-Military Air Traffic Management Committee) to realise the potential benefits of harmonisation. Initiatives tackled by AC-MAC to date have included the long-term alignment of systems, operations, procedures, infrastructure, capability planning, and training. Early attempts at collaboration between the two organisations had limited success, highlighting the differences in customer focus, operational and financial systems. Recent initiatives, prompted by the activities to procure CMATS, have gained greater momentum and are contributing to a greater level of collaboration.

Airservices has an ageing workforce demographic, currently with an average age of around 45 years. A generational shift, however, is taking place where an influx of new operational staff has entered the workforce to replace those who have reached or are near retirement. The RAAF operates on a posting cycle that sees the movement of staff every two or three years. Airservices also has a rotation of operational and management staff.

So one of the major risks to implementation and ongoing operation on Onesky is capability continuity. A level of stability in capability must take place within each organisation to ensure that a sufficient number of skilledexperience people are in place to effectively manage and operate the system. The challenge for both organisations is to keep staff capability in key positions despite attrition and rotation.

To manage the transition to Onesky Airservices is proposing to utilise the generational shift in technical and engineering staff between the old and new systems. Harfield explains this approach. “It is intended, for example, that the current generation of technicians or engineering staff who are looking to retire in the next few years will see out their careers with the current systems, while our newer generation of employees will focus on the Onesky systems. By lessening the need for technical staff to cross between old and new systems our training load reduces significantly. ” From an air traffic control perspective, the CMATS operational transition is expected to be considerably less challenging than the implementation of TAAATS. The implementation of TAAATS involved a change from analogue to digital, a generational shift in air traffic management systems technology. In effect CMATS is the replacement of one form of digital technology by another.

The greatest portion of air traffic controller training will be directed at teaching the use of new functionality that will be available in the CMATS. Other controller training will be directed at bridging the differences in the HMI – human machine interface.

“In minimising the differences in the HMI between the two systems means that we will not need to have the level of training bow wave that we experienced with TAAATS. In effect we are planning to be able to blend the workforce over the two systems. Although some additional staff capacity will be required for a defined period it will be significantly less than was needed before,” Harfield notes.

“On reflection we did not realise the full extent of operational benefits from TAAATS. The step change in technology resulted in organisational transition being focused almost entirely on undertaking the activities needed to bring the new system into operation. Unfortunately it meant that we tended to replicate the service delivery methods we had previously used, [and] not strive to achieve a marked increase in operational performance immediately.

“Our approach with Onesky is to consider the array of transition activities in their entirety. This means we are looking at post implementation activities as well as those needed to be undertaken for CMATS to enter operation. We have established teams to guide these operational transition activities. These teams are looking at undertaking transition activities in a manner that controls risk but which will still maximise benefits for our stakeholders. ” The transition from TAAATS to CMATS is expected to take place over a two-year period. The rollout of CMATS into towers and control centres will start in the western areas of Australia and then progressively move to the east.

Airservices and Defence are taking a long-term view on the organisational transformation activities associated with Onesky. These transformational activities will extend well beyond the commissioning of the CMATS system. The new ATM system will provide the technological backbone to deliver a step change in service delivery to aviation users. New organisational responsibilities and the need to achieve benefits to industry necessitate a shift in the organisational cultures and the development of strong leadership.