Examination of Witnesses (Questions 81
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2000
SIR ROY
MCNULTY
AND MR
COLIN CHISHOLM
Chairman
81. Gentlemen, good afternoon to you. I apologise
for keeping you waiting. As you can understand this is a subject
of some concern to everybody who uses an aeroplane and everybody
who lives under one. Can I ask you firstly to identify yourselves?
(Sir Roy McNulty) I am Roy McNulty, I am the Chairman
of NATS.
(Mr Chisholm) I am Colin Chisholm, the Chief Executive
of NATS.
82. Thank you. Sir Roy, do you want to make
an opening statement?
(Sir Roy McNulty) Yes, if I might make a few comments
just to summarise the progress that NATS has made since we last
appeared in front of this Committee last December. Despite the
continuing increase in traffic, which was referred to earlier,
we have maintained our record of safety related incidents at historically
low levels. We have also kept our delays at reasonably low levels
although this year delays, because of the 17 June incident, will
be up slightly compared to last year in total. Our delays are
still well below the European average. We have reduced our charges
slightly to the customer airlines. We recognise, however, that
our operational performance has not been flawless. Earlier you
were referring to the 17 June incident and no doubt we will talk
about that in detail. That was a disappointment to all of us and
it is the main reason why the delays are now up this year. In
terms of the project programme, Swanwick remains our number one
priority. Since last December we have met the major milestones,
or been very close to them. We have made good progress and we
are now confident that the new centre will come into operation
in the winter of 2001/02, although we are equally conscious that
there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of things to be accomplished.
I am pleased to report that we are now at long last making some
real progress on the New Scottish Centre. We have just completed
the initial phase of the work on the building design, and we will
now be in a position to go out to tender on the building, and
contracts are in place for the initial work on the systems design.
Broadly speaking, we have taken a lot of steps in the last year
to improve the planning and control of our project programme and
we are encouraged by the results that we are seeing. That is all
I want to say by way of opening statement.
83. That sounds quite encouraging, Sir Roy,
but you will not mind if we ask you a few questions on some of
the bits that perhaps you have gone over with some speed.
(Sir Roy McNulty) Absolutely.
84. Are you confident that when the new system
at Swanwick comes on stream it will have all of the features that
we require available?
(Sir Roy McNulty) I am, but if I might ask Colin Chisholm,
who has a more detailed knowledge of the system, to comment in
detail.
(Mr Chisholm) Thank you. I have made specific inquiries
about this very aspect. My understanding from my experts, who
work closely with the controllers, is that the system will have
all of the features that were expected for day one. There is one
feature that the controllers would like called—
85. That is rather careful use of the English
language. They will have all of the ones they would like from
day one, but not all of them?
(Mr Chisholm) There is one that they feel is desirable
called requested level. It is relatively, I think minor would
be the wrong word to use, it is not absolutely crucial in any
way. There is a satisfactory work around, another part of the
functionality can be used to substitute for that particular feature.
86. A work around is the use of paper to get
round bugs in the system?
(Mr Chisholm) No, this is another feature of the system
that we can use to provide that information, and the controllers
are content with that.
87. The controllers are content. I want to ask
some questions about that. Since May you have reduced the number
of bugs from around 500 to around 140. How many of those trivial?
(Mr Chisholm) I am pleased to report the number is
now 120 as of this week. I would not be able to answer how many
are trivial, we certainly would not treat any as trivial. We are
confident that we will pull that number down to between 20 and
30 by our Technical Handover date of 19 December. That is a number
that we can manage. With a number of 20 to 30 we will be confident
that we will know the state of all those, we will know how long
it will take us to fix them or to have a work around.
88. Can you give us a little list of all the
remaining bugs and the severity in the system?
(Mr Chisholm) We could do that. We could certainly
do that.
89. What would the consequences be if any of
the must-be fixed bugs were not attended to before the Technical
Handover?
(Mr Chisholm) There will be some that will be in that
category, we calculate around 20 to 30. It is a question of what
they are. Our judgment at the moment, and we will have to test
this when we get closer to 19 December, is that none of those
will be of the nature that they are safety critical or system
stability critical.
90. So you would expect the CAA to be prepared
to let the thing go ahead because you are saying that the remaining
bugs are not safety critical?
(Mr Chisholm) Correct.
91. As of January 2001 all air traffic controllers
are going to receive formal training and certification of the
new system bug ridden or not, is that right?
(Mr Chisholm) Yes, but the bugs remaining will not
be in any way crucial to that training.
92. So when they receive certification, the
fact that there are still bugs in the system will not be in any
way difficult for them?
(Mr Chisholm) Correct. None of those bugs will affect
the functionality that they are using to train on the system.
93. You are absolutely certain of that, because
of course this is a tremendously important point. You will realise
that the difficulty with these systems has been the length of
time it has taken to straighten out the problems, the numbers
of people being involved, the different firms at various times
abandoning their involvement in the software and others coming
along. We are not talking about something that has not been very
minutely examined by this Committee.
(Mr Chisholm) That is understood, Chairman. It would
not be possible for us to go ahead with the OCT training, as it
is called, this year long programme of training, if there were
crucial faults which affected the functionality that the controllers
were trying to learn.
94. And the CAA presumably would not accept
that?
(Mr Chisholm) Correct.
Mr Bennett
95. You used the words very carefully at the
beginning that the system would meet the requirements of the controllers.
Are there any other requirements in the system which will not
be met, or is the system actually going to achieve the specifications
that were originally placed upon it?
(Mr Chisholm) Yes, it will. It has already done that
actually but since the delivery of the system to us we have been
making it work in our environment. As far as I know all of the
necessary requirements have been met. Of course we have a list
of things that we want to add beyond O-date, improvements, enhancements,
things that will help us to cope better.
96. But they were not in the original contract?
(Mr Chisholm) No, they were not.
97. What about this problem with bugs? You have
identified certain bugs, how do you know that there are no other
bugs there?
(Mr Chisholm) Through a process of very rigorous testing
and extensive testing. We are running the system through hundreds
of hours of testing. I should say, by the way, for the sake of
absolute clarity that there are more than 120 bugs but those other
bugs are in other categories such as documentation only faults
or in non-operational systems. We keep a log of all the faults
right the way across the entire Swanwick system.
Chairman
98. What about this one that occasionally loses
aircraft off the screen? Is that not a little bug that we should
take an interest in?
(Mr Chisholm) It would be one I would take a lot of
interest in. I do not know of that fault.
99. You are going to give us a list.
(Mr Chisholm) We will certainly do that.
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