Service Delivery Environment project and ATC shortages
I thought it useful to briefly explain the recently installed Service Delivery Environment to non-ATCs and the major role it plays in ATC shortages.
SDE combines ATC units into 'like type' service delivery areas - Upper Airspace (high level over Oz except the east coast), Regional (regional towers and lower level airspace) and East Coast. East Coast is divided into Service Delivery Lines: AD-ML, ML-SY, SY tower/TCU, SY-BN, BN-CS. Previously, ATC groups consisted of all sectors within a defined geographical area; so a controller could work a low level sector (class G and E) and later in the shift a high level sector above (class C and A).
Now, for example, Regional takes care of a sector underneath an East Coast sector. Controllers no longer hold endorsements across different SDE areas so an ATC who used to hold 4-5 sector endorsements only holds 2-3. So a sector will be declared TIBA (no ATC service - pilot self-separation) when a number of controllers are available who held the endorsement but who's recency (5 hours plugged in per 21 days) has lapsed. It was clear some time ago that there weren't enough controllers to transition to SDE but management did it anyway. They WERE told. So AsA blames the national/global skills shortage, Civil Air, previous management and individual controllers. The correct way to project manage SDE would have been to build up controller numbers THEN transition. This was done successfully (with significant overtime) when the last big project was done - moving from the paper strip and basic synthetic radar environment of ATCCARDS to the (overly?) sophisticated TAAATS. A 'bow wave' of staff was planned to allow controllers to be released to develop procedures, train on the new system and ghost in the old one. The bow wave was more of a ripple but at least they tried! SDE planning was lots of talk without realistic controller number crunching.