This post is part of the series Prototyping the Roster for an Understaffed Air Navigation Service Provider: Part1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
As a short recap from the previous part, we started prototyping the roster shortly after the kick-off meeting, by implementing the organizational settings and map the organizational structure. After everything was done and confirmed by our clients, we further continued the domain customization and started to build the ANSP structure by defining employees, their licenses, and the units.
Replicating the ANSP structure, step-by-step
1. Defining license data
In the previous post, it was already presented how the data is collected and manipulated before being added to the SkyRoster platform. Before we added all the employees’ IDs to the database, we started to define their requirements for the licenses, following the internal rules of the ANSP. There were only two requirements required by our client: English Certificate and Medical Check. Each requirement had a general validity, which was set to 365 days, but both had also conditional validities.
The English Certificate had three conditional validities, and these were dependent on the English Level that each ATCO has. The first level defined was called “Level 4”, and the validity of the certificate was increased three times, to three years. The second level – “Level 5” has its validity set up to six years and for the last level – “Level 6” the validity became permanent.
In terms of Medical Check, the general validity was also set to 365 days, but there were two conditional validities defined. For the personnel with the age below 40 years, the validity of the medical check was set to two years, and the person over 40 years must renew it annually.
Having the requirements ready, the ATM Consultants defined the licenses, also called Qualifications. There were defined four qualifications:
ATCO
Competency Assessor
Supervisor
OJTI (On the Job Training Instructor).
Each License contained the name, a roster code to be displayed in the roster interface, the qualification's requirements already created, and the general validity expressed in days, or permanently.
2. Importing the ANSP's organigram
As we were done with the competencies, the next big step was to reproduce the ANSP structure on our dedicated SkyRoster Cloud Server. Our clients asked for rostering solutions for just a part of their organization and this was represented by a Tower Unit and an Area Control Center with nine teams. In the process of defining units, some minimum contractual details were given to our consultants to be imported into the database. That information was stored to create the custom-tailored experience with the most accurate data. The data represents the number of allowance days per year, the number of any type of requests permitted, maximum overtime allowed, and carry-over allowances per year - for every unit, team and department.
3. Importing staff data
As the Units are defined, the next step is to populate them with employees. During this process, each employee was assigned at least one qualification. There was a total of 81 ATCOs to be defined of which 12 were Supervisors and 69 ATC. For each employee, a specific set of information was given by the ANSP. This contained the ID code specific to its name, the real date of birth, the main team he’s working in, the employment date, and the qualifications.
All data is equally important for the rostering process. As we mentioned before, the date of birth is used for the medical examination validity, the employment date is used in calculating how many leaves the ATCO is allowed to take each year, and the other information is used when creating the roster and assigning shifts.
After completing all necessary information for each employee, it was necessary to define the unit membership. Each ATCO belongs to a primary unit, the one that he’s working with his team, but can also move to work with other teams when necessary. Because the case of this ANSP was that they were understaffed, it was agreed that all employees can also work with other teams when it is necessary to bring extra manpower to cover the demand.
As everything was defined, an exact image of the ANSP was reproduced. In the next part, we are going to discuss the shift types, how the manpower requirements were extracted from the Sector Opening Time Table and how the employee annual leaves were introduced for a full year, to balance the monthly average.
Now it's the perfect time to start your ATCO Rostering Automation journey, by signing up for our Free Plan. We can also further discuss the needs of your organization by Booking a Demo.