Interview Questions Flashcards
Why are you interested in this role and what is it about the job that would motivate you most?
Why - Im extremely interested in this role as, as I am looking to progress as a safety professional and this job presents an exciting challenge.
Transitioning into the En Route safety role presents an opportunity for me to integrate my past experience in safety within tech services and NSL. It allows me to shift my perspective from ensuring safety within projects to ensuring that new projects do not disrupt operations. This shift represents an exciting new challenge for me as I’ll be on the other side of the fence, so to speak.
Stu Price
Motivation –My motivation stems from a desire to understand all facets of safety within NATS, and I want to deepen my knowledge and get to meet more people in the Operation. It would be very motivating to me to get a greater understanding of the operational risks and how they are managed in an operation environment, and also being closer to the ATC environment, especially as a former ATCO would also be particularly rewarding, especially as I have a first hand understanding of how operational changes can impact them on a day to day basis.
What qualities do you believe you can bring to the role?
Essentially my previous experience of working in safety in NATS, and as an ATCO enables me to retain composure in high pressure situations
For example for SVS delivery while fulfilling the roles of FMARS Safety Manager and SVS project assurance concurrently, while the project safety lead was I found myself in tense meetings where stakeholders expressed their frustrations in front of a large audiences in meetings due to perceived delays in safety document delivery. Despite this pressure, I was able remained calm and composed, effectively mediating the situation. I later initiated one-on-one meetings with individuals to calmly address their concerns and clarify the situation, and was able to help keep the project documents on track whilst and mediate the situation keeping frustrations under control.
My attention to detail when reviewing and also writing documents to ensure clarity, and accuracy –using plain simple language and precise communication I believe is extremely important especially with safety documents as information can often be misinterpret leading to additional workload
My strong communication and interpersonal skills enable me to collaborate effectively with colleagues and stakeholders. In my Tech Services role I am the point of contact between Tech Services and the Military Aviation Authority (MAA), and whereas we have had strong links with the CAA, that strong link was missing with the MAA ices with the MAA .So. I identified this gap in communication and took the initiative to establish quarterly sessions with Kulpdeep and the MAA, so this was able to not only strengthened our relationship with the MAA but also facilitated smoother collaboration between our organstion
What preparation have you done for this interview?
Firstly, I researched the responsibilities and requirements of the En Route Safety Team by talking to team members such as Gabriel, Jess to talk about safety performance – steady state residual risk tracker – HARM database, Duncan what he does day to day discussed the AC environment and AC unit safety case , - also read through the Centres Safety Cases, as a suite of documents and attended a reassessment of a class C risk to the operation - read through the MATS pt2 TC , AC and Prestwick
Wendy Ashing Future Assurance – discussed their role as an independent endorser of project changes ensuring they are SMM compliant.
Andy Williams – Manager Operations Safety Performance – Stu Price DGM / GM = previously have worked with stu price but I though I would touch base to see what he is looking for from enroute safety
Mark M .. J Roberts etc
Ops Safety & Assurance - Who they have spoken to and why.
NATs Wide - went over the NATS Organisation, Safety Strategy 2030 and of course 2040 Safety Policies & Statements etc and also
went back through the SMS rereading through processes that in addition to ‘Manage Functional System Change Safety Assurance’ SAF04, SAF005, SAF 006i more aligned to the current operation -
-Manage Functional System Safety Assurance SAF 008, 009, SAF 010
-Manage Continual Safety Assurance - SAF 0012, SAF 019 & 020
SAF014-SAF018 - incident reporting or investigation processes
Manage Safety Investigations SAF013- 018
MATS Pt 2 … Swk, PC, TC .. Western radar etc
Who are the stakeholders for En Route Safety Assurance / Ops Safety & Assurance
As En Route safety are helping the operating authority agree changes to go into the operation , en route safety are the ones who have to manage all the risk ..and they do it on behalf of the operating authority .. So I would say that Director En Route (Martin Donnan) is the Main Stakeholder as the Operating Authority and those who represent him such as GMs Gary Dixon, Paul Peers DGMs –Stu Price (acting GM) Jon Waddington , Lee Grant etc .. PC DGM .Chris Wellstead .
EnRoute Safety sit under Director - Ops Safety & Assurance Jamie Hutchinson .. so he is one of our stakeholders
Lousie Woods and Sam Wright .. requirements etc
Director Airspace & Future operations – Chris Norsworthy
ATC – Other safety teams futures assurance, safety & sustainability, Tech services S&A team, operations safety teams Safety Performance & Investigation
Regulatory Agencies: Regulatory bodies such as the CAA or the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in Europe set and enforce safety regulations and standards for air traffic control operations.
Can you describe the En Route Operations management structure?
Chief Ops Officer Kathryn Leahy
Director En Route ATM (Martin Donnan) with GMs at Swanwick and Prestwick (Gary Dixon & Paul Peers) and DGMs. Jon Waddington (Swanwick)Chris Wellstead (Prestwick) Stuart Price (Swanwick) Lee Grant (Swanwick)
Director Airspace & Future Operations Chris Norsworthy
Director Operations Planning & Resource – Phil O-Hare
Director Operations Training – Jodie McMenamin
Director Operations Support - Dave Harvey
UK Director Nats Services – Ian Mcdermott-Paine
Operations Safety & Assurance Director - Jamie Hutchison
Mark Mckinlay is Hd of Quality & En Route Assurance
Jason Roberts = Manager Safety Assurance for Prestwick and Swanwick.
Sean, Gabe etc the EnRoute Safety team receives our reports from projects to feed into their assurance cases. Section 9 below describes the Centres assurance in more detail.
Robert Brown hd of Safety Performance & Investigation
Andy W Manager Ops Safety Performance & David Williams – Manager Operations Safety Investigations
Head of EnRoute Safety Improvement ?
Head of Safety Oversight? May not be En Route ..
Brian Janes hd of Future Airspace – Wendy / Pete = responsible for endorsement of projects to check they are SMM compliant.
Andy Lowry – Hd of Safety standards - Andy Lowrey is able to provide information on the unit’s safety accountabilities if these are needed to determine the correct stakeholders during safety planning stages
Acceptance process - What do you think our role is regarding the acceptance process for changes delivering into Swanwick and Prestwick?
The En Route Assurance team work to provide confidence to the En route Operating Authorities and the Ops Leadership Team that everything that impacts the operations is fully assured and that they can confidently take safety accountability for it. Provide guidance to Ops Authority provide a supporting role… somebody from EnRoute Safety goes to all the acceptance processes / panels .. i have spoken to Jess about the acceptance process and they explained that .. go to an acceptance panel and its a review to make sure that all the evidence is in the right place .. safety evidence, transition, mops, SIs etc … enroute safety are there to make sure that everything is in place and that the projects arent just trying to push it forward without lots of outstanding actions .. so that en route can recommend that the porject is ok to go ahead
What are the key assurance challenges for accepting projects and changes delivering into Swanwick and Prestwick?
Challenges –
Project timelines - projects trying to deliver on tight timelines, leaving insuffient or compressed timesframes for assurance document reviews – code switching between multiple project or assurance documents –
Robust assurance - making sure the assurance documents are really robust that all evidence items are in place or at least tracked properly through the project DDP
Post Implementation - Once a change or project has been delivered .. ensuring that the post-implemetations actions are in place and have been assigned owners
Regualtory compliance - Making sure any changes meet Regulatory compliance - regulatory stakeholder engagement
understanding impacts on baseline risks, understanding and evaluating how changes affect existing operational risks -
What are the key safety risks in the current Swanwick and Prestwick Operation?
Day to day tactical - Drones .. level busts ..
In an ATC environment Expect: Infringers, Danger Area / Special Use Area infringement, excursions outside of controlled airspace, Controller overloads.
Difference between PC and Swk
End of life systems - NAS
How do we measure the risk of these types of events?
We measure safety in a number of ways Incidents are assessed Risk Analysis Tool (RAT) as the post-incident analysis tool. and we assign RAT points to each of these, allowing us to quantify our safety performance, in a qualitative way the causal factor trends.
For measuring risk expect: Risk Analysis Tool (RAT) as the post-incident analysis tool.
RAT severity scores are assessed using six criteria: (i) Minimum separation achieved, (ii) Rate of closure, (iii) Detection of potential conflict, (iv) Plan to achieve required separation, (v) Execution of the plan and (vi) Recovery when separation is lost
RAT is a European wide tool. NATS targets are related to traffic, so it is the number of RAT points per 100,000 movements.
Safety performance monitoring for systems – we look at the performance of the systems and how we are meeting those performance targets - and use these alongside the Assurance Cases to identify the current state of the systems which allows us to measure change in performance against
Info from STAR Reports – look at causal factors and emerging trends from the STAR Reports
What is the current Centres assurance documentation structure?
How do you envisage the Centres assurance documentation will evolve and why?
What do you understand about software assurance levels and how they are derived?
What is your experience of working with the Regulator CAA SARG in your current role?
How do the SARG team provide regulatory oversight at Prestwick and Swanwick?
periodic (two per year) oversight audits for each Centre against the regulatory requirements 2017/373, resulting in findings and observations. Also day2day oversight whereby Inspectors may raise findings whilst attending site (e.g. for ATCO Validation Boards, attending sims or training activities etc.).
How do you think the En Route Safety Assurance team are involved with operational system failures and incidents e.g. a loss of NODE-L, loss of back-up RT?
