The UK's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is facing a race against time to prevent the opening of its ú350 million ($570 million) Swanwick en-route air traffic control (ATC) centre slipping to late-1998, as prime contractor Lockheed Martin works to finish debugging 1 million lines of software code.
NATS is aiming to bring the centre on line in March 1998, but is working to a tight timetable and admits that any further delays will result in the opening being pushed back until at least the following October, to avoid risking interruptions to northern summer schedules. The original opening date had been set for December 1996, but has already been delayed by technical problems.
According to Dr John Barrett, NATS London Area programme director, the controller training programme is now the "...critical path. The decision on the point at which operations start will be determined by the success of the training programme," he adds.
Nearly 300 Lockheed Martin engineers are working to deliver the fully operational system, which must be in place by June to allow the training programme to be completed on time. Barrett says that training will not begin until the software demonstrates "...an appropriate level of integrity. It is very important to have a solid simulator to start training", he says.
The Swanwick delay has meant that the existing West Drayton centre in London is having to be kept operational longer than planned, although Barrett says the extra cost is likely to be kept down to around ú9 million. Lockheed Martin signed a fixed-price contract to build the Swanwick Centre.
A go-ahead for the UK's Scottish Centre could be announced this week, say industry sources. The Government is considering bids from two consortia, led by Lockheed Martin and Hughes.
Source: Flight International
