A Korean saying has it that “Even children of the same mother look different.” This holds true for how ATC units organise Air Traffic Controller Rosters:
Some units organise their controllers in teams, others work on individual rosters.
Some units consist of 10 persons and a maximum of 2 sectors, others include hundreds of ATCOs and tens of sectors.
Some units only work on one rating, whereas others work across 2 or more, with their staff not necessarily qualified on all ratings and/or sectors.
Some plan their staff dynamically depending on traffic forecasts and sector openings, others have fixed seasonal plans and cycles.
Some are short of staff (or were, as we speak) and others do not have staffing issues.
All have rules about publication and change management, but most of these rules are then different.
All have rules about resting times, but virtually none are the same.
And the differences continue, with the only constants being two:
- They are all ATCO roster and
- They are all different!
With this knowledge in front of us, we decided that it will be very difficult to commercialise a one size fits all solution. Instead of offering a standard approach, we started developing programme modules which would allow us to offer our clients the product they need, based on building blocks we already have (modules) AND which are in turn adapted as necessary for the client.
So, in the meantime we have a fully-fledged roster management tools and also individual elements which allow us to:
- Count working shifts and other elements per ATCO– that can then be used for ensuring spread across sectors or spread of work across periods (like weeks/months, etc.), or to count overtime or for other purposes.
- Link ATCOs and their ratings and unit endorsements with the sectors
- Have different rostering ´templates´ so as to cover different sector opening scenarios.
- Deal with resting time rules as prescribed by the client.
- Allow changes of shifts between ATCOs
- Have different roles set within the tool and workflows for information and approvals between various roles.
- Notification mechanisms
- Etc.
The roster management module is part of our ARM (ATCO Resource Management) suite and can be connected to the competence management module. The latter would then monitor competence compliance (expiry of endorsements, dates for assessments and training, etc).
Would you like a private demo of our tool, please do not hesitate to drop us a mail…