Bristol International Airport – investment has proved to be a success

By enabling the team to be more effective, ClickAirport have helped Bristol International Airport’s Airside Safety Unit to cover 33% more distance on bird patrols alone than across all their duties previously. With an investment equivalent to half a full time employee, an auditable record of a primary safety responsibility has been created that would otherwise have required input from 6 times as many employees. With Bristol’s increasing traffic and investment in capacity, the more productive workforce will be able to deliver more of the growth required from airside services and ensure standards are maintained through the inevitable growing pains.

Background
At Bristol International Airport (BIA) passenger throughput has nearly doubled between 2000 and 2003. The airport is now handling almost 4mppa. The forecasts in the recent Government White Paper suggest that by 2030 it could attract between 10mppa and 12mppa requiring an increase in the scale of airside safety service delivery

BIA’s management team need to ensure they optimise the effectiveness of the front line mobile teams and balance the deployment of resources with delivering the service standards required. Even in the event of uncertainty of future growth, the management team would need to control resources appropriate to maintaining standards.

An increasingly stringent regulatory, legal and economic environment also means BIA need to prove their diligence in discharging primary safety duties, especially under the spotlight of the CAA audits.

Solution
BIA engaged ClickAirport to increase the level of visibility of how airside resources deliver services and to improve the productivity of front line teams. Initially, the implementation employed mobile computers and a wireless ‘hotspot’ to capture data about wildlife hazards and control activities. Reports are made available through a secure login to an Operations Portal online. The system, implemented by the airport team with ClickAirport, allows everyone in the decision-making process more immediate access to information. The system went live in June 2003 and is complemented by services to ensure it best supports the front line team and management alike. The specific items recorded on the mobile computer are the operator details (PIN access), bird patrols (start/ finish), bird counts (species/ quantity), location (map based), when (atomic clock), dispersal technique, success factors, pyrotechnics used, shotgun cartridges used, culls, vehicle mileage, diurnal cycle and weather conditions.

Bird strikes cost the civil aviation industry $2.5 billion per annum worldwide and ClickAirport works with leading experts to bring best practice techniques into airports with their systems. Richard Moore, IT Manager of Bristol International airport says, “While most airports are primarily looking at the benefits of new technologies to the passenger and terminal based staff, we are committed to reviewing their use for all manner of benefits. We are delighted to have had the opportunity to improve airfield safety”.

Results
The ClickAirport system has been used by Bristol International Airport since June 2003 in support of the Airside Safety Unit’s Bird Control duties. The first twelve months of the use of the system were compared with the twelve months immediately before. As far as possible like for like comparisons were made, but in some places, the earlier paperwork did not provide the equivalent detail. A simple model of the reporting process, ‘capture>collate>analyse’, was used to define and compare the performance of the two management information systems. This model isolates the reporting process within the broader bird control system and separates bird control techniques from the decision mechanisms.

Capture: The recording at source of an observation or activity whether it be on paper, committal to memory or into a mobile computer.

Collate: The administrative task of centralising the data to enable a comprehensive view to be taken. This would include some sort of master repository, log or database and the provision of a standard set of reports.

Analyse: The value added task of using the standard reports, generating ad hoc reports to learn more about specific details and applying analysis tools and techniques.

Over the first year of use, the ClickAirport investment has proved to be a success with members of the ASU being able to spend more time in the operating environment executing their primary safety responsibilities rather than collating data in the office environment. For example, in the twelve months prior to the introduction of the system, the overall distance covered in airside safety patrols was 20,418 miles- a distance limited by the time required to carry-out paperwork in the vehicle or office. It took nearly an hour to source and sum the mileages. It would be useful to know how many miles used to be covered on bird patrols alone, but this information does not exist. With the ClickAirport system it took less than a minute to show that in the twelve months after its introduction, the distance covered in bird patrols ALONE was 27,250 miles (33% increase) with no change in resourcing levels. Also, time now spent in the office is focused on the value added analysis of the automated reports, rather than the cost drain of collation.

In terms of the increased amount of data captured, during the twelve months prior to the introduction of ClickAirport, there were 72,450 birds observed from an unknown number of individual records. There are an unspecified number of records because it would have taken too long to count them- suffice to say a page count estimates there to be about 8,600 records. A second estimation approach was taken to validate this. Each record shows an observation of many birds. Therefore, the number of observation records was certainly LESS than 72,450. In fact, it is reasonable to assume (based on current data with 5 birds per observation) that about 14,490 records were made in the twelve months prior to ClickAirport’s introduction. This is of the same order of the 8,600 records estimate, but the case study gives the benefit of the doubt and applies the higher figure of 14,490. In the twelve months after ClickAirport was introduced, the number of records ALONE was 82,632 suggesting a near 6 times increase in data capture.

ClickAirport’s ongoing services continue to see these statistics improve.

The ClickAirport approach to date has proven that this investment, which is roughly the equivalent cost of half a full time employee (assuming a 3 year amortisation), would create an auditable record of BIA’s safety activities that would otherwise require six times as many employees to create.

All of the system information is easily retrievable when required, and provide evidence (an audit trail) that BIA undertake Bird Hazard Control as described in the local Bird Control Policy. In fact, the July 2004 Civil Aviation Authority Interim Audit positively commented “…it is proving to be beneficial in terms of recording/ monitoring and accessing data for immediate interpretation and analysis”. Further, in the same audit the system authoritatively ‘adjudicated’ in a discrepancy between the CAA’s and BIA’s records.

Conclusions
The increase in mileage brought about by using the ClickAirport system is mainly down to the time freed up for front line duties, but is also in part down to increased accountability of members of the team and ease of data capture. BIA therefore has a much clearer picture of the bird hazards and control activities, providing the ability to increase safety through better use of information and ensure safety standards can be maintained through future traffic growth with a more effective workforce.

Pete Exley, BIA’s Airside Safety and Operations Manager says “although we still need to apply best practice techniques to control wildlife, the systems give us more time on the airfield to do that, enable us to identify problems more easily and allow us to quickly implement effective wildlife policy”.