BIFM Innovation in
Products Award
Introduction
This BIFM Innovation Entry from MITIE highlights our Passengers with Reduced Mobility (PRM) technology solution developed for London Luton Airport by MITIE Facilities Management.
On 26 July 2008 EU legislation came into force which states that all European airports must offer an assistance service for their passengers. In common with other airports, Luton operates this service to meet the needs of passengers with reduced mobility.
This is run by a dedicated team that co-ordinate agents to assist passengers based on both emergency and pre-notified requests from the airlines. MITIE was awarded the contract to run this service by London Luton Airport Operations Ltd at the beginning of 2010 and, in consultation with the client, quickly realised an opportunity existed to significantly improve efficiency, accountability and reduce costs through use of improved technology.
Our aim over the following pages is to demonstrate how we have created an innovative and unique solution, not offered anywhere else in the Facilities Management sector, that not only meets the customer’s challenging requirements but also improves service to a group of passengers for whom travel can be difficult.
About MITIE’s PRM Service
Our PRM contracts offer passengers with reduced mobility a wheelchair service to and from aeroplanes. The service is free to passengers and ensures a smooth transition from arrival at the airport to boarding the aeroplane.
Often passengers will be wheeled directly on to the aircraft but in many cases, the ambulift will be used.
MITIE has investing in a number of ambulifts to help people with reduced mobility onto and off aircraft at a number of airports around the country. Ambulifts are special vehicles, which include a capsule attached on a scissor lift that allows passengers in wheelchairs to gain access to aircraft safely and easily.
MITIE's ambulifts can service huge airliners such as the Airbus A380 down to smaller aircraft such as the Boeing 737.
Partners
London Luton Airport Operations Ltd
London Luton Airport Operations Ltd is our client. London Luton Airport is the UK's 5th largest passenger airport with passenger numbers at 9.2 million during the calendar year 2009.
The Airport is publicly owned by Luton Borough Council but is operated, managed and developed by a private consortium, London Luton Airport Operations Ltd, formed of the following:
- TBI plc, a specialist airport management company, became the majority shareholder in London Luton Airport Operations Ltd in March 2001. In January 2005 TBI plc was taken over by Airport Concessions & Development Ltd (ACDL), a company owned by Abertis Infraestructuras (90%) and Aena Internacional (10%) - both of Spain;
- Abertis is one of Europe's leading infrastructure providers with a market capitalisation of some €8 billion euros;
- Aena Internacional is the international business arm of Aena, the Spanish national airport and air traffic control organisation, which owns and operates 47 airports across the Iberian Peninsula with some 155 million passengers using its airports. Aena also has operations in Central and Southern America.
Serversys Ltd
Serversys has been working with MITIE since 2004, initially providing a simple but effective PDA auditing solution backed by Sage CRM system. As a direct result of that initial success we have forged a strategic relationship over the years that has helped us deliver key, leading edge, helpdesk and PDA solutions to meet our complex business needs.
Often working to incredibly tight deadlines Serversys has consistently proved their ability to work to defined budgets whilst still providing additional innovations, ideas and enhancements along the way. Just as importantly they have supported our developed applications with tireless dedication and often outside normal working hours without question.
As a direct result of this partnership our solutions continue to give us a unique selling advantage and edge in our market sectors.
The Business Case for
Improved Technology
Overview of the PRM Service
The PRM services offers passengers with reduced mobility assistance to and from aircrafts. Any passenger with reduced mobility advises their airline in advance, usually at the point of booking, that they would like to use this service.
This information is notified to the airport by the airline at least 36 hours in advance. Anything less than a 12 hour notification is considered un-notified and can result in increased per passenger levies to the airline by the airport operator. Passengers with reduced mobility arriving at the airport use a Special Assistance Waiting Area and at check-in, staff advise them of their pre-boarding time. There are also help points located in the airports car parks for passengers requiring assistance into the terminal itself.
The PRM service is obligated to ensure that passengers are ready for boarding at the correct time and so must collect them from the waiting areas and deliver to the aircraft in sufficient time. This is strictly controlled with financial penalties or compensation imposed by the airlines for any delay caused by the PRM service that cannot be justifiably explained or mitigated.
The PRM service is delivered by a team of PSA’s (passenger service agents) co-ordinated by duty managers and co-ordinators who allocate resources and staff. The teams work in a shift pattern. Overall responsibility for the team is to a dedicated Service Delivery Manager.
The old PRM workflow
The PRM team had access to a system which displayed arrival/departure times and limited passenger information for approximately 300 to 400 flights per day. In addition various airlines used different methods to communicate PRM requests to the airport, the collation of which added to the administrative overhead. The problem with most flight and passenger information was that it didn’t consistently contain reliable PRM data. Hence, only approximately 30% of requests were communicated in advance effectively. The remaining were dealt with on an ad-hoc basis which made matching resources to demand very difficult to plan.
The old system was completely manual. For each request a paper docket was completed and manually updated by the passenger service agent with various simple status’s such as no show’s, delays, etc. At a later date this information was then manually collated into Excel spreadsheets for later reporting purposes creating duplication of effort and a delay in reporting information being available. Similarly, requests for information meant reviewing hundreds of paper records. If information could not be found or verified then avoidable fines from the airlines could be levied.
Objectives for a new solution
The existing system was in need of updating and modernising but the prohibitive cost of developing an unproven system from scratch could not be justified and no suitable system was available off the shelf. Having analysed the requirements of this challenge and discussed them with our strategic partners we were confident that by applying some creativity and innovation to the problem we could fast track a bespoke solution using existing proven core technologies whilst minimising both risk and costs. The business objectives set by London Luton Airport Operations Ltd were:
- Reduced costs through staff efficiencies, avoidance of fines and ability capture costs more effectively;
- Total visibility of real-time management information, service levels and reporting;
- Centralised data;
- Better customer service through access to real-time updated information and quicker response times;
- Increased efficiency;
- Improved accountability and compliance; and
- Effective resource monitoring and planning.
The Technology Solution
Overview
Before any development could start the requirements were thoroughly documented by our business analyst and business intelligence teams. Due to the complicated potential workflows, each process was painstakingly mapped and flowcharted to ensure that the developed product would meet both user and client requirements.
Once a specification for the work was agreed, work could begin. Critical to the project was that, in common with our VisionIT product, we were able to leverage a core rapid application model (based on Sage CRM) along with Serversys’s rapid PDA development model. This enabled us to create an entirely new application in under eight weeks that was still bespoke to London Luton Airport Operations Ltd. We achieved this at a fraction of the cost of developing a traditional solution from scratch.
The development cost to MITIE was over £20,000 for the bespoke elements of our existing solution, over and above our standard licensing agreement. This firmly demonstrates the strategic relationship we have with Serversys and our ability to remain cost effective within our market sector, without compromising the output.
The solution we have developed is web based with a zero client footprint for maximum flexibility. It runs on a Microsoft SQL server platform and uses Microsoft SSRS Reporting Services for bespoke report creation. The entire service is hosted at our own secure data centres running over https for maximum security and uses GPRS connected PDA’s running Windows mobile communicating over our Vodafone APN.
Development of VisionIT PRM
To meet the required business objectives it was clear that three distinct areas of development needed to be addressed:
- Automated data entry;
- Use of mobile technology; and
- User control and management interfaces.
Data Entry
The key challenge faced was addressing the lack of accurate and consistent PRM request data as this was one of the key issues affecting efficiency of the service. We researched the existing data feeds used but these were not suitable so we looked to outside sources and decided on SITA. This is a system used by the airlines and agents and to provide flight and passenger information to other providers and services. Although not used by London Luton Airport Operations Ltd, we subscribed to SITA for the improved core information we needed. We decided this information had to be integrated into the core of our solution as a way of automating job creation as far as possible or we would not be able to meet our objectives.
We receive SITA information regularly via a service to our data centre but this still presented technical challenges as the data needed for PRM requests is not in a consistent format. To overcome this we had to design a unique middleware solution that searches this data for the flight and passenger information we need. Complex logic is applied, but essentially if PRM passenger information is found then it is checked against pre-existing data in our system for duplicates. If found then the most up to date information is used. If it’s new data then this is used to automatically create a new job request with no intervention required from the user. This is currently 90% successful, but even for the remaining 10% of information that is sometimes corrupted at source, it is available within our system for easy manual transposition into a new job request (figures 1 and 3, all figures are in ‘Supporting images’ section). General flight information is available from within the application (figure1) and is updated in the same way.
Aside from automated data input from our SITA interface there are also occasions when an agent assisting a passenger may create a new job from his PDA based on new information the customer has given. This is communicated back into the main system in real-time.
Use of Mobile Technology
Another huge challenge was to capture the many potential status updates that are possible (figure 4) whilst providing the PRM service to a customer. Since these need to be reported on at a later date for service level purposes it was vital to log them at source. This could only be done using a remote PDA solution if we wanted to avoid the previous duplication of effort transcribing manual job tickets. We developed a bespoke application on the PDAs that is logically event/workflow driven based on a defined set of actions, thereby helping to guide the user through the correct procedure for the job as the customer progressed through the various parts of the airport. This information was transmitted in real-time (updated every 15 seconds) to complement the system monitoring and alerting tools elsewhere in the application. The logging of this data effectively creates a full audit trail which can be recalled via the system at any time.
The mobile technology is also used to allocate new jobs to agents (figure 2 and 5). The agent is alerted on his PDA screen and can accept or decline the job giving reasons. The next step in PDA based job allocation is for automation based on the agent’s position. We are currently working on using Wi-Fi positioning to automatically locate the nearest available agent to the customer!
User Control and Management Interfaces
Completely new screens were designed for PRM management. A flight information screen (figure 1) allows real time monitoring of flight status, which is critical to job allocation to agents and saves wasted time collecting passengers that do not require service because their flights are delayed.
The agent monitoring screen gives an instant snapshot of which agents are available and what their current status is as feedback for their PDA’s. Up to the minute information is available and because of this we are also able get active alerts if a job is in danger of breaching a service level so we can pro-actively take action before that happens.
There are also new screens that allow manual job booking (figure 3) and search functions to help answer queries immediately with the aid of full on screen audit trails. Trend analysis was also built in to allow better allocation of staff resources and shift patterns.
Clients are able to interact with the system at any time via their own customised portal (figure 6).
Revised Workflow Using VisionIT PRM
90% of PRM requests now populate automatically into the VisionIT PRM system with the remaining 10% processed manually but easily due to all the information now being centralised. All requests are now monitored by a supervisor on real-time screens and allocated to passenger service agents based on indicated workload and availability via their PDA’s. The information they receive is fully populated with all necessary information such as the type of assistance required, passenger name and flight information.
Should a non-booked passenger require assistance this will be flagged up and a prompt will appear in the VisionIT PRM system that can be allocated to a service agent quickly and effectively via their PDA – something that wasn’t possible using the old manual system.
Throughout each PRM request the service agent updates information about the status of the request and area they are in. This critical information if fed back in real-time so service levels and resource planning can be assessed more effectively and quickly. Any queries can now be answered immediately due to the in-built search functions and improved availability of key data. Importantly, when a PRM request is completed via the PDA the co-ordinator is immediately aware of their availability to receive more work thereby improving overall response times as well.
Summary of Benefits
The new system met the proposed requirements and overall provided the following benefits to clients, users and customers:
- 300% improvement in PRM request capture;
- 10% reduction in staff costs through greater efficiency and trend and resource planning tools;
- Significant reduction in risk exposure to fines and compensation to airlines through improved service and availability of service level and management information data (no data yet);
- Increased scope to charge airlines for failure to notify requests (no data yet);
- Improved customer service – better response times to ad-hoc requests due to system alerting and faster response to customer queries (from hours to seconds) with instantly available data;
- Increased efficiency – no duplication of effort, faster response times, less wasted time due to flight delays;
- Full compliance – centralised real-time data means measurable service levels with full incident tracking and audit trails;
- Improved customer perception through improved technology and service; and
- Direct client access to detailed real-time management information.
Conclusion
We are proud to have delivered a unique and truly end to end technology solution for the PRM service at Luton Airport. The increase in efficiency that our solution provides is becoming more critical to London Luton Airport as the turnaround times for short haul, low cost airlines is ever decreasing so the need to board passenger promptly is becoming greater than ever. As is the need to capture critical data for compliance, conformance and management reporting.
Whilst the technologies used in this solution are not new in the marketplace any more, they are still often prohibitively expensive - particularly when applied to niche challenges. Having been presented with an unusual challenge we believe that the way we have pulled available technologies together as a complete solution to virtually automate what was a manual solution is both unique and innovative. The implications for the rapid, cost effective, development model we have used for London Luton Airport are significant in the FM sector, especially as we also have in-built helpdesk capability already. What we have learnt solving this problem challenges both the use of larger, less agile, non-bespoke FM software systems and the affordability of top flight bespoke solutions for smaller companies.
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