NATS £45m Cost Savings - Suggestion Box
 

I'm sure I am not alone in being slightly amazed that we have apparently been operating as a business, and people have been picking up large bonuses, even though the company has been carrying £45m of excess costs for all these years.

I imagine a lot of NATS employees have ideas about exactly where the company can save money but might not willing to post them on the intranet for fear of retribution.

I'll kick the ball off. Travel & Expenses.

I think it should be brought in house - why pay someone £1,000s to make them redundant when they could redeployed to do this work.

And while I am not suggesting there is any abuse going on I think in this day and age all T&E should be visible.

Neither of these ideas alone will save the company the many millions needed to be saved but they would be a giant step forward in reassuring the staff that this cost saving exercise wasn't just an opportunity to target certain groups of employees.

Much as I don't like the thought of people losiong their jobs, I hate the fact NATS has been slack in cost control even more.

We have had redundancies, and Barron has just threatened more, yet this week the HR department managed to find employment for 4 people whose jobs had been closed due to cost cutting.

HR seems to be expanding whilst every other department shrinks.

The latest stupid idea... (this one will never hit the streets but it's an indication of how short sighted and stupid some people are).

NATS college students. If they fail a course but have been selected to get a second chance the new idea is to terminate their employment but give them a contract saying they will return to NATS in x months time to start the module again.

How many people are going to leave for 6 months, then give up the job they have found to return to college on the off chance that they will pass the module (and then the rest of the training) second time around? (This idea has been 'parked' as the saying goes, but it shows you how little some people know and understand).

I feel that Paul Barron is correct with some of his ideas, they just need a bit of fine tuning.

Nice idea with regards to night shift manning, however i think its not the ops room that needs looking at.

According to my HR web page, i have an HR buisiness partner AND a deputy at my beck and call. Surely a tad extravagant, especially when the reply to my questions consists of a cut and paste from the staff handbook!

Just with any company the essential staff are those who generate an income.Coal mines( when we used to have them!) had the miners working to produce the saleable product, in NSL/NERL its the ATCO/ATSA and engineers that actually generate the income.

The company seems to have lost sight of this and become very top heavy with a wonderful array of job descriptions that do not generate an income for the rest of the company.

As for NATSNET, good idea Frank Disclosure, i do not trust the system, or the backlash that could be comming my way if i post with regard to certain topics. The number of management Toadies with unfathamable job titles cheering at the latest bollox initiative is something to behold. Rather reminds me of the story of the Emperors new clothes!

It all used to be about A SAFE, ORDERLY AND EXPEDITIOUS FLOW OF AIR TRAFFIC.

Not any more is it mores the pity!

Base our many business goals around the safe, orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic and cut the rest of the nonsense. Simples really. How many projects of one sort or another are ongoing in the hallowed halls of CTC and elsewhere? And how many of them will actually bear fruit? Quite.

Let's get back to basics and back to what we do best - the core of our business.

And let's stop telling our employees how happy they should be to work for us, whilst at the same time bleeding away their T&C's and filling them with Intranet propaganda that's so blatantly skewed it's embarrassing.

I hate to say this, but the whole new Prestwick centre thing looks a little bit like the elephant in the room now doesn't it? How much is the T&RE/Relocation budget on the HR side of things going to cost alone, without everything else factored in? Offers starting at least an extra £50k per person that shifts up there, package dependant of course.

They can't say we didn't warn them.....

And finally three words; business, travel, direct. Nuff said.......

I am fed up banging on about this shower. They manage to inflate every fare I have looked up.They explained the difference in fare as "booking me on a restricted business fare" ....Aer Lingus DON'T have business class....or fare.. Last week they decided the bag I took to my course I didn't need to bring back...hence I had to pay and claim. No biggy but since we are paying them they should at least perform.(I brought this up at Barrons first bar steward session but he poo poo-ed it)

Like TESCO I thought every little helps.Seems not.

I can't believe some posters on NATSNET asking if we can bandbox Swanwick and SCOACC at night.

First they're talking about putting centes and sectors together, one day they'll be bemoaning the fact that someone's put planes together.

I for one do not want to be in the seat when the music stops.

Cuddles,
The worrying thing is that the people who came up with the idea of bandboxing Swanwick and SCOACC at night are the very numpties that management actually listen to. Barron cronies and yes men who are dragging our profession down the drain. Anybody like me who presents management with an unpalatable truth that is deemed 'uncomfortable' gets a disciplinary for their trouble. And how much will my visit to the beak cost the company? Two return air fares, two nights in a hotel, two days car hire, and the odd bite to eat. And possibly a couple of AAVA's to cover my absence. That's what the company is prepared to shell out for a visit to the headmaster's study.

The idea of bandboxing centres at night has come from some fu*kwit in HR who probably has no idea about what actually goes on behind the door to the Ops Room. My suspicion is that he's wondering where out ping pong bats are :eek:

I can only speak from the viewpoint of Swanwick as I've only worked there, but anyone wonder how much those new vending machines have cost. I'm guessing Aramark haven't paid for them and for all the pretty new signage around the resturant. What is the point of them really?

Turn the bloody lights off at night and during the day. The amount of lights that I see on during the day when the sun is streaming in through the windows beggars belief. Likewise do all the lights in the car park need to be on all night, turn half the off from 11pm and switch them back on at 5am if it's still dark. No one is coming or going at that time so why does the car park need to be lit up like a whorehouse

Tell the safety department to stop sending out leaflets with f**king pink elephants and purple camels on with ridiculous banal advice about how to do our jobs. Please can I have a piss poor leaflet telling my grandmother how to suck eggs as she's no quite sure how to do it.

That's three obvious things I can think of without going into all the useless lackeys that have found themselves job titles and sit shivering in an office hoping no one will find them out.

The Many Tentacles
If everyone could do their jobs the safety department would not have to remind them :)
That obviously doesn't include you as you have never missed a readback, had a loss of separation, overload because you didn't split or any other human performance related incident.

For me you lost credability as soon as you started on the one of the few departments that really are trying to make the ATCO and ATSA job safer.

Dispense with highly paid, highly over-rated Group Supervisors.........

I found that most of those who supervised me hadn't got a clue about how my sectors worked, were therefore an utter waste of space, and when the heat was on we had to work around them thus compensating for their seriously deficient knowledge.

Has no one heard of SESAR?

BD

What, we're going to bandbox at night with Maastricht and Paris as well?

The Many Tentacles -

I agree with your points however... the new vending machines are hired and paid for by Aramark, not NATS... at a cost of £7k per year.

Zkdli

The safety department has blossomed, to the extent that they are now overmanned yet we can't cut back because no one in management has the balls (That is a direct quote from someone who works in safety by the way).

The excuse is that if they cut back, even to sensible numbers (anything more would be stupid), and someone has an incident, then management will get the blame. It's yet another cover your arse exercise.

the argument that many tentacles is making is not necessarly the message but the way it is put across. Why pink elephants and purple camels? Why any freaking coloured aninmal at all? Barron realised very quickly that NATS has a very high level of intelligent workers.

Don't treat us like idiots and we'll maybe not switchoff everytime we hear mutterings of new initiatives.

Arty-Ziff

Nats had until recently a big shortfall in ATCO numbers. The temporary drop in traffic has alleviated this but has not made the problem go away. The number of people we need every year just to sustain the natural wasteage is way beyond what we could get from other sources.

Talkdownman

There are some good GS/LAS out there however is it really a full time job? why not approach suitable people with say 5 years experience and ask them if they wish to be in a GS pool. Then they could be rostered on it one or 2 days a month. No scrabbling round to achieve 16 hours radar time each month and a good working knowledge of sectors maintained.

The fact is that there is so much crap being pushed down from higher levels that GS/LAS types now find that supervising has almost become a secondary duty trailing behind all the paperwork that management generates.

Thats what the long term goal of reducing Europes 47 ANSP's down to 6 is all about.

BD

NSL could save some cash by reducing the amount we pony up to CTC.

Slightly misleading and disingenous statement BDiONU. Reducing the number of ANSPs will not reduce the requirement for bums on seats, which is what we are talking about.

Just because we may reduce the number of ANSPs, it does not mean that individual ATCOs will then become current on lots of different sectors.

NATS area ATCOs currently work as many different sectors as is feasible wrt keeping current on them in order to maintain a safe operation. Just because someone might buy out NATS or amalgamate service providers, it doesn't mean that the tasks will go away :ugh:

Quite, and whilst all the other ANSPs are still public services as opposed to profit centre private companies what chance governments actually biting the bullet and closing centres? Whilst atcos may be able to relocate to work at one of the new mega centres there will be many other jobs lost.

I don't see, in the short to medium term, any more than lip service being paid to this. When push comes to shove which government is going to accept closing their ATC centres? Probably just ours :rolleyes:

Roffa is correct. Through PPP the NATS is the most exposed of the European ANSPs.

The aim of SES, as well as reducing the number of ANSPs throughout Europe, is to remove national boundaries and resectorise airspace to make it more efficient. There is no reason why some/all of UK airspace cannot be covered by a centre outside the UK, nor any reason why it will be UK ATCOs who control the sectors.

This is not a matter of if, but just a case of when. SES has it's own momentum and the largest FAB now sits just next to the UK (FABEC). Anyone who thinks SES is not a threat to Area ATCOs is fooling themselves. Just because an ATCO works in area doesn't make their job any more secure than the ATCO who works in a tower.

We let PPP creep in without realising the full implications, which are now coming back to haunt us, and SES is the elephant in the corner that we are ignoring. I just hope we wake up before it is too late to be able to do something about it!:=

At Swanwick....

1) Get rid of all the PLASMA screens trying to brainwash us and spouting other useless cr*p involving Pink elephants etc.

2) Safety and Training Managers....You're fired...bye.

3) Getting people in on AAVAs on Bank Holiday weekends to watch out for infringers...waste of money....we do this already...ITS PART OF OUR JOB:ugh:

4) Close the canteen and give us luncheon vouchers instead.

5) As somebody else said...turn off the lights at night...its not rocket science is it???

6) No more investment in projects that don't work...AMAN.

Funny how many remember the Cr*p pink elephants though...:rolleyes:
And while I remember, the only reason for the Infringer spotter is because the most serious infringer this year was not spotted by the ATCOs until after it had crossed the Heathrow climbout lane very close to a departure.
I am sure that you must have seen it on one of those Plasma screens that you don't look at.:)

yep,

many people remember the pink elephants, purple camels and frogs jumping in trees.

Shame they can't remember the (sometimes) pertinent point that was trying to be made.

If there is a trend that is causing a problem, tell us. It doesn't need dressing up in strange coloured animals. ATCOs acually like to get messages straight without any bull. If HF/HR tried that tactic, then the actual message may be received more readily.

As for the infringer spotter - a complete CYA exercise by management on the back of one incident. It isn't even manned on a busy, sunny friday afternoon - a time when lots of GA get airborne :ugh:. It really is just being done in order for management to turn round to their bosses and say "look at what we are doing". It's quite telling that the watch supervisors think it's boll*cks.

Meanwhile we'll bring in procedures without checking the safety implication or the actual (not perceived) benefits. Even when the experts (the people doing the sectors) give valid arguments against the implementation.

All that people in this company seem to want to do nowadays is to be seen to be doing something. A case of trying to protect their job perhaps?

Zkdli
The infringer position IS a waste of time I'm afraid. It doesn't pick up primary contacts properly, which is what we are most in danger of missing. CAIT is a great bit of kit, but you don't need an extra pair of eyes for those magenta contacts, purely because it does its job so well and they are kind of hard to miss now!
What should have been done (if management were interested in doing it properly) was to split all the approach sectors and have somebody on each sector monitoring that particular piece of airspace rather than one person covering 5 airfields on a radar range of 50miles.
What we had instead was a compromise that benefits nobody and just creates more work.

Zkdli,

Whilst working over the Bank Holiday weekend it was comforting to note that whilst the infringer spotter was meant to be doing their stuff I was involved in two fairly significant infringements into the London Zone, neither of which were spotted by the spotter.

Money well spent :hmm:

Genuine Question:

Are these "spotters",

ATCOs?
Do they hold a current validation?
What positions/sectors are they valid on?
Do they have direct access to the r/t?
Is it a CAA licensed position?
What are their responsibilities?
If the incident as previously mentioned occured went one step further, who is responsible for the outcome - the "spotter" or the validated ATCO working the position?

Interesting.

Hmmm! Very..:ok:
... if there was an incident would you be able to spot the spotter? :D

expedite-off

1. quite often trainees
2. not necessarily
3. none required
4. no - they have to walk very quickly to the relevant controller.
5. no
6. to look for infringers
7. the infringer, obviously!! (though the atco would be given a huge portion of blame

Let's not bother to fix anything.
 

By not fixing any operational systems, unless we really have to, we could get rid of lots of engineers......Oh sorry we're doing that already.






:ugh:

My mate up north says the ATSA's at Scottish have been cut back so far that sectors will have to close to run a safe service. Apparently they drag staff from the simulator to stop any delays. Trouble is they work Mon -Fri 0900-1700. What ever happened to safety :\

That is correct! Its going on just about everyday at Scottish. These staff are not working 0900 - 1700. These staff from the simulator are working shifts in the OPS room without UHP! Ok it doesn't include nightshifts etc but its still varied shifts!

Things must be desperate if they can't afford o/t to man the ops room.

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. We do get UHP, and we are asked if we want to help out in the Ops room. If we can, we do. But we share the view of everyone else, in that they should get some proper staff in to man the ops room not rely on us. :confused:

Our overtime is far too cheap then! It ought to be remuneration such that it is cheaper to have the staff, and overtime is for unforeseen circumstances...

However, can nats afford NOT to man the ops room??

Still laughing at thought of either prestwick or swanwick closing at night though. A novel way to save money that - an idea that is so completely wrong, unsafe and unlicensable in a practical sense (cancel all night flying until those who might want to do it have all the validations for the whole country!!).

Here's a better idea - build wind turbines just off the end of the runways, we can use the jet efflux to make them go round, and use that energy to cut our electricity bills!!!

Or - single manning, but only for managerial positions!

Realistic salaries? How much do you chaps get paid?

I'll get my coat........:ooh:

I [along with 20plus of my ATSA colleagues] retire/leave the company [deliberate lower case] at the end of January 2010 at MACC. So..... potentially Eight additional sectors will be transferred to PC.....with what "support" staff?????
Will Mr B be in charge then?

ali bongo,

please dont take this the wrong way, its not meant as a jibe at you or those that do 'help out' in the ops room.Its all well and good saying they should man the ops room properly, but they are never going to do that whilst you and others are 'helping out', thereby solving the problem. its the same argument for those atco's doing aava's. the ops room is supposedly not undermanned, so why the need for aava's? thats because its far cheaper for the company to plug a short fall on a temporary basis, than to man the ops room to the max at all times. This is also my main gripe with mr barron's latest spout on pravdanet about perceived night shift inefficiencies. He would love to be able to tell us all with 2 days notice whether you will be nights or days, ( and i fully expect the union to cave on that one as well) because its a far more efficient use of manpower/womanpower. that , however would surely end up with the current watch system being thrown in the bin, along with peoples abilities to plan anything for days 5 and 6 of their cycle. The problem is we man the ops room at night, planning for the maximum amount of traffic, so that our customers can get their most efficient routings without flow restrictions, that we cant put on for oceanic traffic anyway. however in this , now, FOR PROFIT environment we live in, the beancounters see this as counter productive to the making of as much profit as they can , to ensure tea and bonuses all round. Sure they can suggest maybe losing 1 or 2 people off the nights or some other hairbrained scheme where swanwick work one night and scacc the other, or some other cr@p like that, but i for one do not want to be sat there on that night when all the sectors are open and i call for a planner and there isnt one. Air traffic control is a safety service, it should be run as such , with safety in mind, and not profit. its all well and good wanting to be lean and mean, but you may end up being the leanest, meanest person ever to stand before the judge. i guarantee you mr.b wont be standing next to you, he'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
rant over

It's the formulae they use for how busy it might be which is flawed :ugh: Conveniently it's based solely on traffic figures which does not account for traffic complexity

ali bongo,

With all respect, there are those who are not getting UHP/ASAP. There were people complaining about just that this week. Maybe its worth checking with some others....

If I have got the wrong end of the stick then I apologie in advance.

Staff can argue till they're blue in the face that cuts are going too far but no will take any notice until the customers start to suffer.

You think you're short staffed one day? Split positions as much as you can. Ask for MDIs to be applied as soon as there's bad weather or bunching.

You think the ops room is short staffed? Say no to overtime.

Emergency or level bust? Ask for a break afterwards.

Dual Valid? Stick to one sector per day don't move back and forward to help out a shortfall.

Lots of airborne holding? Don't tighten the spacing on approach.

Problems with new procedures, equipement or practices? MOR them so the CAA are aware.

Only getting minimal breaks? Make sure you get 30 minutes responsibility free (that means don't take a bleep).

Start your break when you leave the ops room not when the incoming controller writes the time on the sheet.

No staff to relieve you? close the sector, DO NOT work beyond your shift end time.

In short, just say NO.

In the past we've always done a bit extra, gone the extra mile for the good of the system and the benefit of our customers but Paul Barron has taken tens of millions out of our costs and the next guy will do the same.

Our customers want lower costs and at the moment they're getting that with no visible loss of service.

We can't keep providing a first class service for ryanair prices.

Does the company pay for this registered office that it has at Brettenham House South in London? If so why? We have CTC, the supposed HQ for NERL and Heathrow House, the supposed HQ for NSL. Why do we need another office to be registered at? Wasn't the point of dumping Kingsway as the HQ to make CTC the new HQ?

I'm confused........thank God I'm on leave.