Tag: Ingenav

Instructor Booster workshops – Now also online.

Max

A few years ago, I was contacted by an ATC academy with a request to help them with a number of objectives which included:

  • forging a stronger instructor´ team,
  • go beyond the minimum knowledge required (usually the instructor endorsement and classroom instructions techniques) and
  • to reflect on best-fit training delivery methods.

I then set out to create a workshop with these objectives in mind.

Now, we are fours years down the line, with eight of such workshops delivered to four European ATC schools. Five further workshops are already planned for between the end of this year and 2021.

The workshops are a mixture of facilitated sessions and presentations in which we go through a simple, but effective, model that says that to consider learning we need to consider 4 areas: Who, What, How and By Whom.

The who is the student, who has a need to learn, the What is the subject matter – or content, the How is the methodology and methods used and the By Whom is, of course, us the instructors/teachers/coaches.

We go through a reflective path to consider all these elements as the basic ingredients that make up a plate. One can say that there are as many learning experiences as there are plates and the trick is to dose the basic ingredients right. However, as anyone who has attempted a little bit of cooking knows, before dosing an ingredient, one needs to know what it tastes like and what effect it´s presence (or absence) and quantity will produce in the plate.

The results help those attending, who range from instructors to training managers and those responsible for training development to reflect about the fit of the learning experience to the ingredients they have: the type of students and the subject matter. It helps them think on whether adjustments to the methodology and methods are necessary and finally to determine their own needs to be an integral part of the recipe.

The feedback received is very positive. We step down the hamster wheel called routine (no wonder that in many languages routine (from road) and wheel are related) and start reflecting on what is working and what can be improved. We come out of the workshop with insight into our work and our needs as instructors. We also come out with concrete ideas on how and where to make adjustments.

This year brought a new challenge: These workshops were until now held in a face to face set up with a lot of team exercises and dynamics. With restrictions in meeting and in travelling, we had to take a decision to either postpone the planned workshops, and lose good time when actually reflection and change COULD take place, or find another solution. We decided to go online. We had to consider the number of participants and also most of the exercises and the dynamics in which they are done. The first such workshop took place a week ago with very good results!

As for me, each workshop is a learning experience. I do provide my ideas through the presentations and also challenge the status quo. I also learn a lot, from the day to day examples, from the insight that my fellow instructors provide and also come out energised ready to do more to improve the learning experience in our business!

Supporting ATC students during COVID pandemic – Ingenav´s experience

Max

At the beginning of April, we put up announcements on Linked-in and Facebook offering help with theory and or radar techniques to students who had their training interrupted because of the COVID pandemic. This help would be delivered for free as part of our initiative to help our sector in times of need.

Surprisingly for us, only a few students contacted us for help and they needed reinforcement in practical skills training.

During the months of April and May, we remotely delivered Approach and En-Route Surveillance skills training using PORT – ROSE Simulation Online ATC Simulator platform and our own exercises. Our instructors ran over 50 exercises with these students, adapted to their level of proficiency and helping them to maintain the skills they had learned already in their schools and to learn certain new ones.

From our side, we learned better how to deliver skills training remotely. We have learned that whereas face to face contact and feedback helps in certain cases, it is not necessary 100% of the time. A blend of presential and remote/online skills training is possible. We learned that briefings and debriefings are perfectly possible in an online space and that today the technology to execute and remotely monitor a student during simulation is perfectly possible and highly performant.

From the feedback we received at the end of these sessions, we see that the students, apart from being very appreciative of the gesture, they valued the following in particular:

  • The fact that someone else was giving a parallel and fresh viewpoint on problem-solving and radar skills, that complemented that which was thought in their school.
  • They could experiment outside of their official school program. Experimentation included: different separation techniques (vectors, vertical with rates of climb/descent, etc. ), coordination techniques, analysis of aircraft performance within the decision-making process, coordination, approaches including ILS and visual approaches.
  • Students did not find not having face-to-face interaction with the instruction a hindrance to their development.
  • The empathy and availability of the instructor during these difficult times was what they were looking for.
  • The possibility to continue practising radar skills and to avoid or at least reduce skill degradation.

In conclusion, offering free ATC training during the COVID pandemic has been a very positive experience for us at Ingenav, and from the feedback, we received a positive experience for the students who participated. Large amounts of ATC practical training can be done remotely. The technology permits it and the methodology fits well. We are considering repeating this at a later stage!

Automation and Human Centricity – Three-tier human centricity. Position paper.

Max

There should be little doubt or argument that the journey towards further automation in Air Traffic Control is well on its way and is set to continue. Also, there is little doubt that many of the future solutions will have, at least, some of their components based on Artificial Intelligence techniques.

If we look at SESAR´s Level of Automation Taxonomy (LOAT) model as displayed below,  

most modern ATC Systems are somewhere between B4/B5: High level – full automation support of information analysis and C1: Artefact-supported Decision Making.

The end goal for most R&D projects is to arrive to D8: Full automation of action sequence execution for all ATC tasks.

This raises a few items to consider and this is what we at Ingenav think about this:

  1. Until D8 is reached on all ATC tasks (whether it will be desirable for it to be reached is the subject of item 2), humans will be part of the system and the system will need to be Human-Centric.
  2. It is questionable whether, even if technologically possible, it would be desirable to reach D8 and have a non-human-in-the-system ATC chain.

Developing these items, a little further we need to consider:

  1. A three-tier Human-Centric approach is necessary:

Human-Centricity needs to be seen holistically:

The design of an ATC system needs to be done through a human-centric approach. The result, i.e. the ATC system itself needs to be human-centric. And with the growing autonomy coming about, one shall not forget that the end-user of ATC is not the air traffic controller but the airspace user: the human who flies the aircraft. These are the three tiers – from the design, to the product itself, to its output.

Starting from Tier 3: Human-Centric design:

The design of an ATC system shall be led by its usability and by its interaction with the holistic system first. Rather than having a technology-led design in which the “what can be done” is defined first and the “how” is done later, human-centric design requires agile development cycles between definition – prototyping – human in the system testing – adjustments – redefinition and advancements. The design team needs to incorporate from a very early stage operational expertise that understands the business and the process and that co-lead the design. This should be the case even when the functionalities that are being developed would be in the high Ds in accordance with LOAT as these will always interact with other processes where the human is involved.

Tier 2: Human-Centric system:

The result of the design – i.e. the product, needs to fully integrate the human as part of the system and not its operator or the mortar which glues together the imperfections created by the other parts. A Human-Centric system understands how the human works and integrates the human´s processes into the overall system. Principles such as relevance, timeliness, prioritized and rationalized for human understanding should be key in all the interactions of a human-centric system.

Tier 1: Human-Centric outputs:

It may sound obvious but it is often taken for granted: an ATC system acts as an intermediate; it is a safety net and an efficiency boost to air traffic and airspace users (that is the objective of ATC!). It is airspace users who execute the instructions generated by ATC. Until further notice, aircraft will be flown by humans. The instructions provided by ATC need to keep that in mind. So far, this has been taken for granted because the human-in-the-system at the ATC level automatically made the adjustment. However, in a scenario where some of the instructions are not generated by a human, the system has to keep in mind they will be executed by one.

It is important to insist on Human-Centricity and the human-in-the-system principle and not to see the human as an external agent who acts as an operator or a mediator, or even worse as a corrector of imperfections. It is important to take the learnings we have made in the past decades and build on them rather than to try to discard them because we believe that advanced automation will make the human somehow less important.

Question 2: is it desirable to arrive to D8?

The quick answer to this is that we don´t know. To date, we do not have the maturity to understand what a fully autonomous system, which in turn is an intermediate between vigilance and execution, would mean. The gap to get there is still too big and we need to narrow this gap in order to understand better the ramifications. Of the ramifications, we are able to identify to date one can include resilience, of such a system and degraded modes, interconnectiblity, responsibility, certification, the holistic concept of operations of the airspace user and societal (is it, in fact, desirable and productive from a societal perspective to try to eliminate the human from the system?).

R&D in this area must continue and needs to be holistic and not just technology-driven. We can do a lot of things but should we apply them? By continuing R&D, the sector will mature further and whilst bridging the gap, we will also understand the opportunities and the threats that such changes would bring. If we ever reach D8, it should be an evolution and not a revolution.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, work is in progress towards advanced automation in the lines of decision-making support and basic autonomous execution of tasks. Human-Centricity is primordial in the development of such tools and this human-centricity needs to be taken care of in 3-tiers: at design, at the system and at output levels. Achieving D8: full automation of task execution for all tasks making up ATC should be an R&D goal and not an operational one at this stage. The gap between the current paradigm and that one is too wide and we do not have the maturity to understand the ramifications of such a change. R&D needs to be holistic and not just technology-driven. A stepwise approach towards understanding will be necessary.

 

PS Ingenav is currently participating in a project with a Core European ANSP and ATC system manufacturer to introduce Decision Support Operational ATC tools using amongst other historical data and machine learning principles. In this project, a 3-tier Human-Centric approach is being applied.

A big thank you to our pool of instructors – we´ll be back!

Max

With this post, we at Ingenav wish to thank our closely knitted pool of instructors who have helped us in the past years to deliver high-quality training services to our clients, with a very high rate of repeat business.

Until early March, and the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe, our network of active instructors originated from 7 different European countries. Together, we were regularly delivering services to clients in 5 countries.

The dedication, experience and qualifications of our instructors are high, and so is the cross-fertilization that was taking place between our pool, all learning from what the other had to offer.

Thank you to all those concerned for your hard work. This tough containment period is hopefully almost over, the time to be back in action is drawing nearer!

We´ll be back!

A modular approach to a roster management tool, and a bespoke experience for the client.

Max

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…