I have worked at Heathrow and Stansted. I have also recently visited the new tower and, therefore, feel in a position to add to this debate.
Firstly, I have great sympathy with my Heathrow colleagues who are having to deal with the move and the newVCR at the same time. Change is never easy and doing it this way surely adds to your frustrations.
Secondly, Stansted was at the forefront of developing EFPS and I can assure every one that it was tough. Many of us had our doubts with the system both before and after it was installed. We made mistakes with it and had our frustrations and worries. But, it has developed into a very user-friendly system that assists the way I do my job at a very busy single runway operation. From my visit to Heathrow it appears that the controllers are going through the same apprehension that we did. This seems to be mainly from the fact that you don't fully understand the system and how it will work in the real world. What is plain to see, is that you need some help from people who use the system daily so that we can help you develop it so that your training and operation becomes a little less frustrating. I'm sure that anyone (with this experience) on this forum would offer their help and I am certainly one of those (please PM).
As for making mistakes in the Simulator, that is why you are doing the Sim runs to make your transition easier. I'm sure that all the Stansted, Gatwick and now Luton controllers would admit to making mistakes when we were training and this increases the worry. I will admit that you have it harder because you are using a very realistic sim (we still have Simtac) in a very busy traffic environment, but this is why you carry out the exercises.
Having visited your new tower, I think that your worries over transfer times are well founded. What you should be asking for is that every controller parks as close to the tower as possible and that a better long term solution should be provided. On saying that what a really tremendous place to work. I thought that Stansted's tower was modern and futuristic but the new tower really shoves it into last century!! I'm sure that you will have some difficulty adapting to the new layout but do you really want to be working in the current tower when T5 opens. As the Sun article states you are high up the order in terms of controller ability and surely this means that you should have the most modern working environment and not one from the middle ages!!
A rather long post, I know, but hopefully I have provide a reasoned argument from experience. Help is out there for our colleagues at Heathrow and please ask before it's too late. I can absolutely assure you that EFPS and the new tower will he assist you for all the future difficulties (T5, mixed mode etc) that will come your way!!
