Supporting Zurich’s AOP implementation

The target of the project was to support Zurich Airport’s work on AOP, incl. finalizing and fine-tuning their gap analysis for AOP and laying the foundations of a concrete roadmap for the implementation with a concrete short term action plan.

Airport Intelligence was asked to provide expert input by:

• Revision of already developed deliverables by the project team
• Best practice sharing on AOP definition and development
• Organisation and moderation of different sessions and workshops to:
  • Challenge vision and ambitions
  • Support in the definition of the roadmap
  • Identify needs in organisational set-up and technical requirements

Zurich’s history of AOP

Zurich Airport has a long history of operational coordination, with the Operational Coordination Centre (APOC) already in place for more than a decade. Several tools are at the disposal of this APOC to support them in their decision making in the planning and management of operations both landside and airside.

Zurich Airport wanted to evolve towards more proactive and data-driven decision making based on an overall Airport Operations Plan, integrating the range of tools already available and new, to be developed modules. How exactly this would be done, was still to be defined. With the European regulation CP1 in place and its adoption of it by Swiss law, the regulatory framework had set a certain standard. Though, other modules beyond what was solely required for compliance did hold important business value for the airport. The question remained, what were the priorities to be set?

In order to get a clearer understanding of their needs, Zurich Airport planned a phased approach, where in the first phases a clear approach and scope would be defined in an agile way. The objective of the first phase was to make a gap analysis between the requirements of CP1 and the ambitions of the airport and the tools already in place. Based on this gap analysis, the roadmap would then be defined for the journey towards iAOP.

It was during this first phase that the support of Airport Intelligence was called in to provide expert support to guide and coach the project team.

Results and outcomes

The following results have been delivered:

• Clear definition of vision, ambition and objectives for AOP
• First high-level backlog for AOP
• Concrete roadmap for AOP:
  • High-level long term roadmap for iAOP and AOP
  • Detailed roadmap for the first year of the project
• Concrete insights in:
  • Organisational set-up required
  • AOP organizational impact and change management needed
  • Technical needs in terms of IT architecture, resources and requirements
  • Opportunities beyond initial internal vision
• Great learning experience: best practice and lessons learned sharing, training and coaching for the extended project team from experts, giving Zurich Airport important accelerators while launching the project