FABEC ANSPs honoured for excellence in safety

CANSO, the umbrella organisation for air traffic control, gave the Global Safety Award 2016 to the FABEC partners ANA Luxemburg, Belgocontrol, DFS, DSNA, EUROCONTROL Maastricht and skyguide yesterday. They were honoured for the level of cooperation they demonstrated in IntACT — an international, cross-border auditing team. IntACT beat numerous top-quality contributions from all over the world as an example of best practice.

IntACT – the International Audit Cooperating Team – follows a proactive and international approach to conducting safety audits and safety surveys. The achievements of that cooperation range from the dissemination of important findings to sharing best practices among the participating parties. Processes and procedures can thus be optimised and harmonised. In addition to the benefits for safety security and quality, IntACT has also improved the efficiency of audits by providing a pool of IntACT auditors composed of all necessary ATM disciplines.

Since 2008, more than 130 safety, security and quality audits of all ATM services have been performed. IntACT has also audited the safety management systems of the IntACT partner organisations. The results and experiences of audits have led to improvements of various aspects of the safety management system of the air traffic service providers involved, such as procedures and training.

Overview on IntACT audits performed

IntACT was founded in 2008 by DFS, DSNA and skyguide with the underlying idea that cross-border learning is a prerequisite for the harmonisation, and even standardisation, of processes and procedures within FABEC.  At the beginning of 2015 ANA Luxembourg, Belgocontrol and EUROCONTROL MUAC joined the group. The level of resources required by audit management at the individual IntACT partner organisations might be reduced as each organisation can now draw on a pool of IntACT auditors which covers all the disciplines necessary to audit ATM services competently.

The whole IntACT group benefit from the perspective of best practice and information sharing. There is now a better alignment of the audit methods used between organisations, allowing the conduct of audits to be improved, for example. In one recent case, an audit approach presented by one of the IntACT partners was transferred into a new practical way of conducting safety surveys in another organisation. This experience and the lessons learnt from this application were then shared with the whole group. As a result, the new method is now being applied by a third partner, after being adjusted to their needs.