Greg Down

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Greg Down
2nd ICAO Global TEM NOSS SymposiumFAA
Washington, DC
Normal Operations Safety SurveysThe NAV CANADA
Experience
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PresentationOverview

• NOSS Trials
• Post-NOSS Activities
• Lessons Learned

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NOSS Activities

• 2005-06 Vancouver ACC Enroute NOSS Trial
• 2006-07 Vancouver ACC Terminal NOSS Trial
• 2007 Gander ACC NOSS Planned for 2007

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(No Transcript)
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Vancouver FIR

• Image of Vancouver FIR

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2005 Enroute NOSS Overview

• 3 Enroute Specialties
• 13 Sectors
• 7 Observers
• 57 Observations

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2005 Enroute NOSS Overview

• Project Planning
• Observer Selection and Training
• Observation Period
• Data Verification
• Data Analysis
• Final Report Presentation

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Final Report Presentation

• Provided to (in order)
• Local Management
• Senior Management and Union Executive
• Observers
• Staff

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Final Report Presentations - Staff

• Allowed controllers to hear directly what the
  process was
• what was observed
• what the data meant
• Opportunity to voice their concerns about the
  system

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Final Report Presentations

• High level of staff buy-in of the process and the
  feedback provided
• Controllers wanted the opportunity to fully
  participate/collaborate on the solutions

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What do we do now?The Safety Change Process

• Will depend on individual unit / organization as
  how best to interpret and implement change
• We looked at various means
• Recurrent training
• Procedures teams
• Airspace design
• Staff meetings
• Intra-specialty meetings
• Quality Assurance process improvement
• Steering Committee

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The Safety Change Process

• Post-NOSS Steering Committee
• Consisted of
• one management representative
• the NOSS Project Manager
• one observer from each Specialty

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Post-NOSS Committee

• Identified Targets for Enhancement based upon
  the feedback from
• NOSS Trial Final Report
• Threat / Error / Undesired State Logs
• Observer Narratives
• Feedback from Data Verification participants
• Feedback received from observers, controllers and
  management at the NOSS Briefings

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Targets For Enhancement

• We elected to address several items
• Controller focus groups
• Airspace design changes
• Position Hand-over Briefing Checklists
• Environmental changes
• Other Controller Threat Training

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Lessons Learned
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Involvement of the Union Critical

• Reassures and legitimizes the process for
  controllers
• Assistance in selecting observers who are
  respected and capable

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Communicate Communicate Communicate

• The biggest controller concerns were related to
  lack of knowledge about NOSS
• Importance of preparing the supervisors
• Be present and available to answer any and all
  questions

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Except that people often dont actually listen

• You will do a lot of explaining as observations
  begin
• Deal with issues as they occur

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REFUSALS - Actually a good thing

• A clear indication of the strength of the program
• Controllers quickly saw that there was no
  response for refusing a NOSS observation
• As a result, there were no additional refusals

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STOP Rules

• Provided further evidence of the seriousness that
  NOSS treats controller anonymity
• A couple of examples
• TCAS R/A
• pilot altitude bust

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Observer Selection

• Imperative that are they are respected and
  trusted
• Pick a variety of backgrounds and experience
  levels
• Used controllers who werent already involved in
  many other things (fresh faces)

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Dont burn out your observers

• Space out the observations
• but not too much

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Data Verification

• Phenomenal insight into your operation
• Tremendous amount of work
• One of the greatest learning experiences about
  your operation
• Did I mention the work part...?

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CLOSING REVIEW

• NOSS aims to capture how the system is
  behaving as opposed to how it was designed to
  function
• Draft ICAO NOSS Manual

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