The way the CSD has been introduced at my unit is nothing short of a disgrace.
Firstly in my opinion the whole thing is full of human factors traps waiting to catch you when your guard is down. Turning the way we work upside down is not something that you just change and then forget. I doubt there will be anyone who doesnt at some point have a momentary relapse. Most of the time it will be of no consequence & the realisation will dawn straight away, but I think the people who put their trust in our services deserve better than "most of the time".
Whose idea was it to put the most important area of the display (ie the runway bay) right at the bottom of the bay in my peripheral vision near my belly button? I thought the idea of being in the tower was to spend as much time as possible heads up looking out of the window at the traffic. You have now made the main focus of my strip display in the most heads down part of the strip bay.
I can't now move the strips into my expected arrival order if i'm not actually talking to all of the traffic.
I can't use my runway blocker strip to physically block the runway bay like I did previously.
We hear so much about the swiss cheese model, well I can tell you that my chunk of cheese now has a lot more holes in it than before, and the worst thing is I know that they are there but I'm not being allowed to do anything about them because its not standard.
Even little things like having both runway designators on the same runway strip (one upside down so you just turn it over when you change ends). I dont see any justification for having any reference to a runway not in use in the strip display. But what makes it even worse is that the upside down runway designator is on the left hand side of the strip. Why??? When in the western world we read from left to right the eye is first drawn to the incorrect runway designator, which although upside down is still easily assimilated by the brain. If we do have to have them both on the strip why not put the correct designator on the left?
Secondly the actual process of introduction has been a farce. A quick demo in the sim, then playing with live traffic with the expectation that a couple of hours is all it takes to get the basics then go off and get used to it on your own. Supposedly no pressure and you will get as much training as you need, but all the time knowing that there is a deadline for implementation. (Which admittedly was later allowed to slip, but nevertheless the unspoken pressure was there).
What are you supposed to do having started training with the new system, but not yet ready to use it unsupervised? Having started operating totally differently I think it is just as unsafe to then go back to using the old system as the brain is now caught in a no-man's land between the two. How can you be expected to instantly assimilate which way up your strips are representing the traffic?
I think we should have all been trained intensively over the weeks IMMEDIATELY before the opeartional date and then the switch should have been made unit wide on one date, not the piecemeal way it has happened.
I keep hearing very disturbing rumours that no proper risk assessment/safety case has been carried out for this. How can that be? If they are untrue, which I really hope they are why doesn't NATS management quash the rumours by making them available. Our safety culture is nothing without openness and transparency.
I am not opposed to change, but I am opposed to poorly thought out and badly implemented change.