SESAR is the European Air Traffic Control Infrastructure Modernisation Programme

The SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU) today announced the winners of the 2012 SESAR Project Awards. The awards recognise projects that delivered exemplary performance in the categories ‘Best in Class’ and ‘Outstanding Project Award’: the Navigation Infrastructure Rationalisation project, led by Chama Ben Khelifa (Thales) won the award in the first category. Two projects were chosen for the ‘Outstanding’ category: Dynamic Demand Capacity Balancing managed by Othmar Schnabel (DFS) and Flight Object IOP System Requirement and Validation with Juan Jose Meana Vega (Indra) as project leader. Award winners were chosen from nominations put forward by SESAR’s members.

Once again ATC Global is the venue for presenting the awards for achievements over the past year in the SESAR programme. The second SESAR Project Awards were distributed in two categories: Best in Class, designed to highlight the project complying best with performance indicators such as being on-time, within budget and managing risk assessment; Outstanding Project Award for the projects with the most remarkable deliverables, and the most tangible results aligned with the SESAR strategic objectives.

For the ‘Best in Class’ award, the jury was unanimous in its agreement that the Navigation Infrastructure Rationalisation project, managed by Chama Ben Khelifa at Thales, was the clear winner, achieving two major deliverables during the year. Patrick Ky commented that the project was “very well run with a highly motivated project manager”.

In the ‘Outstanding Project’ category the award went to the Dynamic Demand Capacity Balancing project managed by Othmar Schnabel of Germany’s DFS, which was commended for delivering “interesting and promising release results.” For this year, the jury decided to award a second project in the same category: Flight Object IOP System Requirement and Validation, managed by Indra project leader Juan Jose Meana Vega.

This year’s awards jury comprised SESAR JU Executive Director Patrick Ky, SESAR JU Deputy Executive Director Operations and Programme Florian Guillermet, Thales SESAR Project Director, Luc Lallouette, and Stefano Porfiri, SESAR Programme Manager at Selex Sistemi Integrati. The jury congratulates the project leaders and their teams for the outstanding work done in the past year and announced that a new category, ‘Best Validation Exercise’, will be introduced for the 2013 awards.

Project descriptions:

Best in Class: Navigation Infrastructure Rationalisation

The project aims to provide key inputs on rationalising the conventional navigation infrastructure, which is the basis for aircraft navigation in Europe, and on evolution towards a future integrated ATM architecture, including satellite navigation.

The jury found that project deliverables were provided to the SESAR JU on time and with “very high quality”. They commended the programme manager for “engaging in consultation largely beyond the Project membership”, and “establishing a close relationship with other SESAR projects.”

Outstanding Project: Dynamic Demand Capacity Balancing (dDCB)

The dDCB process takes place on the day of operations and maintains the balance between demand from all airspace users and capacity. dDCB is reconciled at network level, and is fully integrated with airports, en-route and airspace user planning and execution processes.

The project achieved several successes, including planning and execution of a live operational trial, as a Release 1 exercise, to validate the STAM (Short-Term ATFCM Measures) concept, which has the potential to deliver important capacity benefits. It also created effective working relationships between the R&D and operational areas within both Eurocontrol and the participating ANSPs

The jury commented that the project “has clearly delivered impressive results in very challenging timescales”.

Outstanding Project: Flight Object IOP System Requirement and Validation

The project addresses the technical challenge of enabling flexible mechanisms to support the Collaborative Decision Mechanism and enhanced interoperability for flight data. The project is particularly complex because it requires strong integration between ATC systems of different service providers.

The jury said the project was “contributing to the innovative SESAR concept and demonstrated a real step forward for system interoperability.”