Digital transformation: putting users and providers first
Airports are the gateways to many of our cities. But they are also increasingly an important part of city branding. Often the first part of a city that a visitor encounters, airports are no longer simply a transport hub. As we have seen in places such as Singapore and Dubai, airports are as much an experience and destination as many of the more traditional city attractions.
“If it weren’t for the people…the world would be an engineer’s paradise.” - Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Player Piano’
The continued transformation of our airports will be driven by digital — more specifically, the use of integrated journey-wide data. Its use touches all facets of airport operations, such as growing revenue, reducing cost, enhancing the passenger experience, managing disruption and reducing risks, with increasing automation and applications of machine intelligence emerging as the new normal. The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic has not only confirmed the importance of digital and data, it has also accelerated the pace of change.
However, the ultimate success of the transformation of our airports can only be reached by bringing people on the journey, be it staff, customers, passengers and stakeholders. People can empower the success or present the biggest resistance to change.
When it comes to transformation and change, one frequent, yet limited way of looking at it is as either a technical or a people problem. The concept of a “people problem” includes issues such as culture, resistance, communication, engagement, and behaviors, to name a few. Meanwhile, the technical-related challenges include planning, budgeting, risk management, quality control, process, system requirements and the like.
But this dualism is a false dichotomy, since the technical components of a change are interlinked with the people that need to address and manage such problems. As such, it is a leadership and governance challenge at multiple levels that requires a holistic approach towards the two main components of change: people and technology.
Recent experiences at both Dubai International Airport and Mumbai International Airport show how, by putting consideration and integration of people upfront, it is possible to embark on a journey for ultimate success and an improved experience and services. Using digital technology, these airports were able to identify and respond to human needs — both functional and emotional — resulting in a holistic approach that aimed to produce a more efficient infrastructure and to increase the quality of the user experience for both airport users and service providers.
Service-led transformation at airport hub in the Middle East
Dubai International Airport serves close to 100 million passengers annually, requiring many different stakeholders to work closely together. However, these diverse stakeholders often have different views of how success is defined for a given challenge and airports use multiple performance metrics to measure passenger services and performance.
One issue that is commonly experienced at airports is long queues, which can be caused by multiple interconnected factors such as time of day, weather, operational processing time, passenger volumes, all of which can involve various departments of the airport and external stakeholders.
The entire airport experience can be stressful for some passengers, and queues build an additional level of anxiety ahead of such processes such as security screening. This stress can accumulate and detract from the benefits of deployed technologies, as passengers are too stressed and not engaged. It has even been shown that reducing passenger stress correlates to increased passenger spending in retail areas.
One key overall service aspiration for Dubai International Airport was to reduce queueing for their visitors at key passenger touchpoints. While new technology, such as selfcheck in, bag drop and automated security screening machines, are designed to reduce queuing, they can be inherently complicated to the uninitiated or unprepared passengers or staff. Simply implementing them without considering the ‘people’ impact often elevates stress further and therefore increases negative engagements with technology, impacting the desired outcomes.
Before you can solve the issue of problematic queues, you need to be able to define a ’problematic queue.’ The first challenge faced was that every stakeholder had their own unique way of measuring queue performance and each had their own version of what good looked like. The airport therefore needed to introduce one common language among the community and agree what ‘good’ meant in terms of levels of service and performance.
To do this, an agreed level of service was jointly determined through developing a plan of operations with the stakeholders for all passenger touch points.
Essentially, this plan of operations captured all airport touchpoints across a passenger journey, with levels of service uniquely defined for each one from zero to five on a sliding scale. This would include processing times, waiting times and crowding factors, and was developed by using global benchmarks and workshops with all of the airport community stakeholders. Level of service (LOS) cards were then used to measure performance.
Once the baseline had been set, queue management technology could then be introduced to monitor queues in key passenger processing points — for example, immigration, security and check-in. These processing points have an interdependency on multiple stakeholders and therefore having the one common language meant all stakeholders could easily agree when success was occurring.
Moving forward from this point, the solution could then be scaled, and an app was made available to the entire airport community from executive management to on-the-floor operational staff, with an aligned goal upfront to reduce the waiting times, and a common understanding of what that meant.
This proved to be extremely successful — Dubai International Airport was consistently achieving scores of three or above on the LOS Cards for 95 percent of passengers at implemented touchpoints. The primary reasons for this were the upfront alignment of the stakeholder community and the introduction of the common language. These became instrumental to the successful introduction of the queue management technology. The ability to speak the same language of change was also critical to ensuring accountability. This was not about pointing fingers, but about helping all parties understand collectively where changes and challenges needed to be managed, and who was best placed to deliver on those items.
Implementation of the queue management technology alone would never have produced the level of success it did without the collaboration of people and the unification of the various stakeholders for a common goal with one common language.
Infrastructure-led transformation at Indian airport hub
Mumbai International Airport was scheduled to open in February 2014, with the new terminal building exceeding the size of its predecessor by four-fold and the introduction of new technologies, including a complex baggage system. The opening of this facility — described by the managing director as conducting open heart surgery on a marathon runner in the middle of a marathon — was deemed extremely complex due to the need of the new systems, facility and attached infrastructure involved to be working together in an integrated way from day one. At the center of all this would be people. In particular, one problem was the huge resistance to change from workers at the airport. There was a fear that technology was replacing jobs, and so in order to address this, the human aspect of technology change had to be elevated in the planning and execution.
Operational Readiness Activation and Turnover (ORAT) is a specific methodology that aims to put people at the heart of change, bring them on the journey — rather than subject them to it — and ultimately test the outcomes of change from a human perspective and not just a technology function viewpoint. ORAT principles were implemented throughout the Mumbai International Airport program. One of the most critical aspects to tackle was the new baggage system. Inevitably this new system would eliminate some of the baggage roles currently conducted by people due to automation and therefore there was a huge resistance. It was critical to address this risk early on in the journey.
One of the most critical aspects to tackle was the new baggage system. Inevitably this new system would eliminate some of the baggage roles currently conducted by people due to automation and therefore there was a huge resistance. It was critical to address this risk early on in the journey. A key part of the ORAT methodology was to ensure we created a ‘people road map’ to upskill and relocate staff that were affected into various other parts of the airport organization. Communication was critical. If people were included in the co-development of their solutions, they would be far more likely to buy in and the program would be a success.
The early development of the people road map also allowed engagement with the impacted airlines and ground handlers around key operational challenges, and proved a key tool in dissolving the resistance to technology change through inclusive communication.
A similar concept can be applied to digital cities. The identification of people’s roles, be they citizens or workers, and how their interaction with the fabric of the city evolves as technology programs come to life, must be carefully planned.