How Heathrow Promotes Innovative Technology

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• How Heathrow Promotes Innovative Technology
• Open Skies: An Update
• Open Skies: Invite to Complain or Compete!
• How to Manage Risks with Chronic Unease

How Heathrow Promotes Innovative Technology Posted: 21 Sep 2015 11:28 AM PDT Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome ADB Airfield Solutions as Underwriter of this post. If you too would like to support the blog, contact us. ADB Airfield Solutions specializes in end-to-end, integrated and sustainable visual guidance solutions for airports worldwide. Their innovative approach SmartExpansion Path leverages turnkey expertise to help airports prioritize expansion plans and overcome growth stress in 8 areas: Traffic management, AGL audit, Design, Products and solutions to Systems Engineering, Services and project management, and Training and Maintenance. Part 3 This is the 3rd part of a new series by Heathrow Airport's innovation team. Part 1 was How Heathrow Innovates and part 2 How Heathrow Launched an Easter App. It's a good idea to read both to best understand how we work when it comes to technology innovation. Today, we'll look at a process we internally call showcase which we used to launch a new digital game. This method is also used to collect ideas that may not arise from a challenge-gathering team session.   What is a Showcase? In our team, we avoid what we call 'tech push'. This is when you find a new technology and try and sidestep it into the business. Instead, we use technology as a solution to a business challenge and then think about the right technology. Sometimes when the area is completely new, we introduce it to colleagues using a showcase. Not only does this provide a great way of showing innovative technology to colleagues, but it also provides a great opportunity for us to network within the business and to speak with suppliers about their technology and learn more about a particular area. The devices presented were ones that were being trialed: touch screens, laptops, tablets, ruggedized devices Showcase Format The Innovation Team likes to do a few showcase presentations per year. The most recent was around new technology for kiosks, large format 'glasses-less' 3D screens and wearable technology. Today, I'll focus on the most recent one we had which was on wearables. Glassesless 3D screens that were to go into trial to aid security compliance The event is held in Heathrow's head office, the Compass Centre. It's an ideal spot as many employees are either based there, or are likely to visit the Centre as it is the operation training suite. Because of this, we get a large number of visitors. For example, the 'wearables' event had over 2000 staff members attend over a 3 day period. Right now, wearable technology is a trend that is gaining traction with consumers, as well as enterprise. Some well-known trials have occurred in the aviation industry using wearables – with the most well-known being the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Google Glass trial at Heathrow Terminal 3. The wearables showcase was a hands-on style event. We did this by approaching our suppliers of wearable devices, and we spoke to new suppliers at trade events and through LinkedIn asking them to loan us equipment for the event. As a result, we had around 10 different products, from 2 distinct categories of wearable: wrist worn and head worn. Then, we arranged to have the equipment on display and ensured that the stand was attended to throughout the day with people who could talk it through and engage with Heathrow staff. When doing an internal event like this, the aim is to get feedback from staff on how they might use that technology. With this approach, we can draw out any potential business challenges that the technology might solve. In addition, we see how staff see themselves use the technology as presented. To incentivise staff to take time out to come and see what is on show, we offer a competition prize – usually with the same question: 'how would this technology change how you work at Heathrow?' For the wearables event, we had in excess of 100 ideas come in, the winner of which (as judged by the Innovation Steering Group (see blog post 1)) won a Samsung Galaxy Gear S smart watch. This was one of the products on display. Wearables (virtual reality, wrist worn, head worn) Winning Wearable Idea The winning idea came from a member of the Winter Resilience Team, who are part of Airside Operations. Their business challenge was around situational awareness on the airfield – where stand clearance teams are during snow events, and efficiently we can manage them during times of snow. The current system involves using the radio system, the trial would be looking at using smart watches as a hands free notification system to send updates and actions to teams out on the airfield. The watch also lets the Winter Resilience team report back on the status of their current activity. This innovation was recently trialled during a summer snow practice drill day on the airfield and with great success. As a result, we will be pursuing this concept further within the wider Heathrow IT team.   How to Make the Event a Success To run a successful event, do the following: Relevancy – A technology area might be new and exciting, but completely irrelevant to your business. We chose wearables because of several trials we had seen already in wearables, and we were noticing a push for more enterprise mobility using wearables in the wider sense. Have it in the Right Place – you need to position yourself in an area with high footfall to drive engagement. So, use a space in your office where people congregate. The space we used had a coffee outlet, casual meeting space and lift cores in a wide open space. This meant plenty of people were waiting around for meetings. Advertise in Advance– Tell people about it in your company's newsletter or email run and advertise what people will see and get out of it. The event was advertised on our Intranet and through the departmental email system. Run a Contest – It doesn't have to be much, but if you want to get people to write down ideas, they will want to feel rewarded in some way and incentivised to give up a little bit of their time and thoughts. Make it Popular with Key Stakeholders – Spread invites throughout the day for key people you want to attend, perhaps people you have had conversations about the technology before. Ensure Your Stand Constantly has a Team Member in Attendance– Empty stands don't generate ideas, and having engaging team members there can help you get insights into a particular business area. Gather Challenges – We've tried both paper submissions and online survey tools. Some people prefer to write their ideas out, while others want to think about it more and enter these from their desks online. Interactive – Let people be hands on with the technology, and show them examples of its benefits. A lot of work has to go into creating demo content so people can have a good idea of how the technology might work. Suppliers helped to make this really useful.   Right Time and Length – Consider the best opportunity to run the showcase. Be careful not to choose days that are stressful for different departments (e.g. end of month) or school holidays when your audience might be more limited. Consider the number of days you run it for – 2 or 3 days is ideal. Follow Up – make sure you go back to people who you speak with and those who contribute ideas. We triaged some of the best ideas that were most relevant to the business and spoke to those people individually. The remainder we emailed to personally thank them for their contribution Summing things up, these types of events are a great way to introduce colleagues to new technology and to engage with many members of staff in a relatively short time. Also, they are superb opportunities to introduce one's self and break into teams that one had previously struggled to engage with. As you can see, planning and follow up are the most time consuming parts of the event. But if you plan it well, it provides great insights into the business, so it is well worth it! With 68 years of airfield lighting experience and a worldwide presence, ADB is at the forefront of LED lighting and sets new standards in safety, performance, quality and customer Service. ADB is based in Belgium and works with more than 2000 airports. Visit ADB Airfield Solutions. Images: Neon taxi in Heathrow T2 by Richard Swain via Flickr, all others are by Robin Gissing. The post How Heathrow Promotes Innovative Technology appeared first on New Airport Insider.

Open Skies: An Update Posted: 21 Aug 2015 11:35 AM PDT In April 2015, I wrote about the fight brewing in the U.S. between the three major international air carriers (American, Delta and United) and the three Gulf carriers (Qatar, Emirates and Etihad). My thesis was that this was part of a strategy to get better treatment from the U.S. government in a variety of areas, and to attain a favorable outcome during consideration in the US Congress of legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (the legislation includes many of the taxes and fees airlines and their passengers must pay).  While there were some wild statements from both sides, I believed this was a more limited strategy. And if you read, for example, the speech given by Airlines for America CEO Nick Calio at the International Aviation Club in Washington last Fall, there is much evidence for that. What Has Happened Since? In my view, the US airlines have taken a strategy that was plausible and pretty well considered and made a hash of it.  They began to believe their own rhetoric, a cardinal sin of such campaigns.  The fact that several major European carriers joined in just spooled them up further.  They made new enemies along the way including the cargo carriers and some of the other passenger carriers and they even questioned the motives and integrity of some of the individuals involved (another cardinal sin, don't make new enemies along the way and don't make it personal).  They also failed to understand that in the rapidly changing Middle East, their issues would pale in comparison to Iran and ISIS (as Benjamin Disraeli once said, "a leader must know himself and the times in which he lives."  (The airlines made the cardinal sin of forgetting this). The more attention they got, the more they overplayed their hand.  And now, with the Justice Department opening an investigation into their pricing and capacity practices, the going has gotten a whole lot harder.  (Though I am not sure how much there is to these allegations). The US airlines were, in fact, gaining some traction with their arguments.  As a tactic in an overall strategy to get what they saw as better treatment from the government and Congress, their plan was starting to work.   But just as it was starting to work, they overplayed their hand and committed three cardinal sins of such campaigns. They: Began to believe their own rhetoric. Made it personal and started to make enemies. Forgot the larger context. It is not too late for them to realize this and change tactics. But there is little in the history of such fights to lead me to believe this will happen. Editor’s Note – New Airport Insider will not publish in August due to the summer break so we take this opportunity to wish you and your family a great summer holiday. See you back here in September with another great article! – Jinan Image credits: FokkerAms via Flickr, Umbrella by Neloqua via Flickr The post Open Skies: An Update appeared first on New Airport Insider.

Open Skies: Invite to Complain or Compete! Posted: 21 Aug 2015 11:34 AM PDT Today, we welcome Nadine Itani, a new guest contributor who writes an opinion post about open skies.  Gulf carriers, such as Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways, and Qatar Airways, have expanded enormously and have established an intense global competitive network. These carriers' future growth prospects depend on their ability to gain access to markets in Europe and America. Existing bilateral air agreements and the US incumbent carriers lobby hamper the Gulf carriers’ expansion plans through restricting market access. US Carriers to US Government: Reform Open Skies Competition between Gulf carriers and the ageing big international US carriers has broken out in the open again in recent months, with US carriers filing a claim to the US administration that the Gulf airlines are not playing fair and are endangering US air carriers' sustainability and threatening US aviation employment opportunities. In March of this year, the three major US carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines made public the document that supposedly claims their Gulf competitors are operating successfully due to more than $40 billion subsidies from their governments. Related article by Greg Principato: Open Skies: What U.S. Airlines Really Want The big three US carriers confirm that they support "open skies" but they simply believe that the competition with Gulf carriers is not being "fair". A Compelling Argument? Reading between the lines of the US carrier CEOs press conference reveals the real incentive behind this peculiar campaign. When the three biggest international US carriers unite and get the support of their union groups, then one should look up for the true story. First, protecting jobs is a sound case to defend, but isn't it the same as competition, and shall be defended reasonably through a solid argument? Second, why did the US carriers spend too much time (2 years) to produce the document that contains the super "breakthrough" financial data of the Gulf carriers? Unfair competition is a crucial accusation, when a party owns evidence against its rivals; it shall be promptly taken to court. And, if the findings were so harmful, why was this report not announced publicly earlier, instead of exchanging confidential papers around the White House and US Government agencies? Third is on the perspective of subsidy. It is generally known that subsidy is a sum of money granted by the state to help an industry or business keeps the price of a commodity or service low. The problem is that what US carriers fight against under the name of subsidies is being practiced in the US under Chapter 11. Chapter 11 is a "one of a kind" exit plan that allows US airlines passing through critical financial situations to hold off its credit payments, get rid of debts and embark in a restructuring process. International observers define Chapter 11 as a subsidy, while US carriers insist that it is not. As a personal opinion, how you explain subsidy is insignificant, and allowing it when it suits the US context while suing international competitors for it is a huge sin. If Chapter 11 and antitrust immunity systems are not to be considered facilitating any form of subsidy, then what explains the huge investments of American Airlines (the world's largest carrier) in new fleet and products while the carrier has just came out fresh of "bankruptcy protection". Gulf Carriers Defend Position The leaders of the big three Gulf carriers Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways already responded to these allegations. Tim Clark, president of Emirates Group said: We are not here to take down other airlines, and Emirates contributes to the U.S. economy, through the aircraft orders. referring to the 150 jets from Boeing in 2013, which represents the most valuable aircraft order ever made. While Danny Sebright the US-UAE Business Council president stated: The Big 3 US carriers may first want to check their own balance sheets. Since 2006, they transferred billions of dollars of pension liabilities directly to US government while leaving creditors holding the bag for billions more through multiple bankruptcies. They received billions in cash payments and guaranteed loans in a direct government bailout while enjoying the advantages of antitrust immunity to fix transatlantic fares with their European partners. As Tim Clark promised a "robust, fact based, point-by-point rebuttal" of the charges, he delivered on 30 June in Washington, a hard-hitting document to answer the claims laid against his airline (and against Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways) by the US carriers. The document – entitled "Emirates' response to claims raised about state-owned airlines in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates" – runs to nearly 400 pages and it has been prepared by an in-house team at Emirates led by Clark himself and advised by lawyers, financial consultants and industry experts. Until today, US airlines don't seem to have a compelling case, and it is unclear whether their claims are real about subsidies threatening their ability to compete vigorously and fairly on the international stage. US airlines should simply "stop complaining and start competing!" More Related Articles Rebuttal of the Emirates to US accusations Emirates' response to US open skies claims – allegation by allegation Emirates CEO Tim Clark Blasts Big Three U.S. Airlines, Especially Delta — Since ‘Delta is Delta’ Competition from Middle Eastern carriers may mean lower fares to Europe, Middle East Image credit: Vitor Azevedo New! Digital Marketing Services New Airport Insider now offers digital marketing services. So if you need any help with digital marketing, request our 1-page pdf by sending a mail to hello[at]newairportinsider[dot]com and add “Digital Marketing Services” in the subject line. That’s it! The post Open Skies: Invite to Complain or Compete! appeared first on New Airport Insider.

How to Manage Risks with Chronic Unease Posted: 04 Jul 2015 12:31 AM PDT Editor’s Note: A warm welcome to Laura Fruhen who joins us from Australia sharing research on how chronic unease can be used to support safety management in aviation. Chronic Unease – A State of Mind to Manage (Safety) Risks When making everyday decisions, we rarely have all the information available. Sometimes, we deal with ambiguous information, so we may rely on assumptions. When managing safety, making sense of unclear and ambiguous information can be critical. In this blog post, I will discuss chronic unease as a mindset that can support managers in dealing with vague and unclear information in their decision-making. To Be Wary Is To Be Ready for the Unexpected Some safety issues present themselves clearly. These are often issues that researchers classify as personal safety (i.e. Do workers use the right personal protective equipment?). Other safety issues can be hard to spot and equally hard to pin down. For example issues that are embedded in the processes of operations and can be visualized by Reason's (1997) Swiss cheese. They are the holes that might be hiding in each slice of cheese (i.e. barrier). Some organisations, such as those in the aviation sector, operate in risky contexts and are extremely capable of maintaining their safety barriers, assessing the state of their safety processes, and ensuring the holes in their barriers do not align. They are highly vigilant to weak signals of potential risks. These high reliability organisations (HROs) share certain characteristics that make their risk management so successful as they: Evaluate the absence of surprises as a reason for anxiety, not complacency Assume that they might not fully comprehend the complex systems that they operate and are preoccupied with failure Adopt a many-angled approach of constant improvement towards safety issues Managing Risks Organisations don't always manage risks collectively and it often comes down to the individual decision-maker to determine how to solve a problem or a way to go forward. In fact, organisations are in many ways systems of decision makers. These decision makers, both individually and collectively, are potential hole-makers as well as hole-fixers in the cheese slices that keep organisations safe. The figure below illustrates the impact that managers can have on many of these barriers through the decisions that they make. Decisions are usually made based on information. The quality of any decision then depends on the information that it is based on – and the skills, knowledge, ability and intuition of the person making the decision. As humans, we are usually confident in our attention and our ability to notice changes in the environment and to identify (weak) signals of risk. However, the reality is that our attention is very selective and we often use mental shortcuts (called heuristics) to simplify complex problems. Humans, while confident about their information processing abilities, are in actuality not that great at dealing with ambiguous and complex information. This video nicely illustrates some of the limitations of our attention. In an organisational context, it can be hard to immediately identify the effects that decisions might have on operations. Similarly, it can be tricky to notice what relevant signals present themselves in the environment and which decisions are the right ones in more and more complex contexts, organisations and operations. The Uneasy Manager In our research, Prof. Rhona Flin and I have investigated unease and how it can support managers in their work, particularly in overcoming ambiguity and complexity in information and the environment. Unease has been highlighted as an attribute of managers in highly reliable organisations. Chronic unease refers to the experience of discomfort and concern about the management of risks. It is a healthy skepticism about one’s own decisions and the risks that are inherent in many complex and risky environments. Ultimately, it is the gut feeling that occurs when we are not quite confident in our decisions and our assessment of what is going on. For example, imagine you are an air traffic management supervisor and your employees tell you the following: "Yesterday we broke the record for the number of arrivals in one hour". How do you react? Do you congratulate them? Or do you think about the pressure they may have put on the system? Do you consider the potential risks that could have degraded barriers by operating with higher levels of traffic? Do you worry about the extent to which the ATCOs (Air Traffic Controllers) might have been putting unnecessary pressure on themselves to cope with high traffic loads? Do you worry whether they focus too much on traffic throughput rather than on safety? What about if your employees tell you the following: "The met forecast is often inaccurate so we don't restrict inbounds until the actual visibility falls" What would your response be? Do you wonder about possible inbound overload due to reduced visibility? Are you concerned about how diversions are being handled? Do you reflect on where to hold inbounds and how to inform ACC (Area Control Centre) to reduce speed of next arrivals? Are you concerned about the safety implications of a forecast that is inaccurate? Are you wondering for how long this practice may have been going on? Do you worry about the reasons why you had not known about this before? Would this even keep you up at night? Your intuitive reaction to safety issues such as the ones above can help filter attention to the issues that are most critical and focus further investigation of what might actually be going on. This intuition is often derived from experience. This form of thinking can be particularly helpful when risk related information is ambiguous (that is, it allows for different interpretations or conflicting meanings) or unclear (where not enough is known). You can think of your intuitive reaction to safety issues as an additional piece of (highly subjective) information that you can consider to make sense of the issues that present themselves and where to focus your attention. Why Some Managers May Be More Uneasy Than Others Some managers might be more uneasy than others. Similarly, others might experience unease, but might not refer to it as readily in their work as a source of information. So what are the characteristics of managers that might affect these tendencies? We have identified five characteristics that are likely to be linked to the managerial experience of unease (see Figure below). We proposed that vigilance and experience will shape the extent to which managers notice (weak) signals of risks. Further, we identified that safety imagination (also labelled requisite imagination by Westrum, 1991), the managers' propensity to worry, and their pessimism (which includes a negative outlook as well as a tendency to resist complacency) can affect the level of unease that a manager is likely to experience in response to the risks they perceive. How to Channel Unease to Support Safety Management Experiencing unease is only a starting point. The important question is what to do with it. Just being uneasy in itself will not help managers in their management of risks, in fact it might make them less effective. The trick is to transfer it into useful actions that can lead to better risk management. We found that unease manifests itself in many ways in managers. That included behaviours that the safety literature has identified as having a positive effect on safety. These included: Being inspirational Asking for input from employees Setting clear goals Providing rewards Making safety a priority However, the most prevalent issue we recognised was the extent to which managers tend to channel their unease into flexible thinking. Flexible Thinking Flexible thinking is the tendency to approach safety-related issues from many angles, to think about them critically and to question assumptions. Individuals who are chronically uneasy about safety-related issues are more likely to engage in flexible thinking. Doing so helps them to better solve safety-related problems, and encourage this type of thinking in their colleagues. Flexible thinking can for example entail: Not jumping to conclusions Avoiding standard answers as to why issues occur Exploring new problems with a fresh look, while building on experience Considering all sources of data and information, and identifying whether more data and information is needed Critically examining the issues that are behind the situation Considering each issue on its own, but also the interconnections between issues How Much Unease is Healthy? In our reflections about unease, we reasoned that there is likely to be an optimal, or healthy level of unease for each manager. Too little unease might lead to complacency, so that warning signals are ignored, ambiguities are marginalised, and adverse consequences are not considered. On the other side of the spectrum, too much unease might lead to the experience of anxiety, affecting decision making, action and over the long run, (mental) health. The trick will be for each manager to reflect about the ways in which they react to risks, to use this as a source of information and channel it into behaviours as well as information processing strategies that are going to have a positive impact on safety. So the next time, when that vague sense of unease sneaks up on you, don’t dismiss it. Maybe the ways in which it can be put to use described here can help you to harness it so that it can support you in managing the risks in your business. Image and video credits: Brain via author, Cheese diagram by author, based on Reason, 1997,  Incidents & Accidents diagram by author, video (c) by Daniel Simons (1999), based on research by Simons and Christopher Chabris, posted on YouTube by Daniel Simons Additional Resources About chronic unease and the research that went into developing the concept About Laura's work on organisational safety and leadership or to inquire about research collaborations around unease and other safety related topics This blog post is based on the following research papers: Fruhen, L. S., Flin, R. H., & McLeod, R. (2014). Chronic unease for safety in managers: a conceptualisation. Journal of Risk Research, 17(8), 969-979. Flin, R., & Fruhen, L. (2015). Managing Safety: Ambiguous Information and Chronic Unease. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 23(2), 84-89. Fruhen, L. S., & Flin, R. (2015). 'Chronic unease' for safety in senior managers: an interview study of its components, behaviours and consequences. Journal of Risk Research, (ahead-of-print), 1-19. References Reason, J. (1997). Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Rochlin, G.I. (1993). Defining “high reliability” organizations in practice: A taxonomic prologue. In K.H. Roberts, New Challenges to Understanding Organizations. (pp.11-32). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Weick, K.E., & Sutcliffe, K.M. (2006). Mindfulness and the quality of organizational attention. Organizational Science, 17, 514-524. Want to support New Airport Insider? Become a Benefactor. Contact us The post How to Manage Risks with Chronic Unease appeared first on New Airport Insider.

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