Change Management

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin

Change management in the aviation world is a complex activity. The normal change processes are complicated by the need not only to maintain, but in many cases to improve, airport safety.

In many projects, safety is considered a competing objective to efficiency or productivity. If run poorly, aviation change programmes result in exactly this clash. However, when safety is truly integrated, safety performance can become an aid to realising the financial performance being targeted.

Too often, operational personnel are the last to find out about major change — and they then become significant risks to a successful outcome. AVISU’s strong belief in a common operational vision, mapped to all key performance indicators with safety as a major focus, is a primary part of our change management philosophy — backed by analytical data from our simulation tool, AVISIM.

Change in a regulated environment

In ATM/ANS, change is not an internal matter alone — it is a regulated activity. Under Regulation (EU) 2017/373, ATM/ANS.OR.A.045 requires service providers to manage any change to their functional system through a structured process that demonstrates the acceptable safety of the change before it is introduced. The National Competent Authority must, in many cases, review and accept the change before service continues. This places change management at the heart of an ANSP’s certificate, not at the edge of it.

Where the change involves ATM/ANS equipment, Regulation (EU) 2023/1768 and the amendments made by 2023/1771 add a second dimension: the equipment itself must hold the correct attestation — certification, declaration or statement of compliance — before the provider can integrate it into the functional system, and the design organisation producing certified or declared equipment must be approved under 2023/1769 (Part-DPO). A modern change programme has to coordinate both tracks — the provider-side safety case and the supplier-side equipment evidence — against the same target service date.

Risk, process and software assurance

Effective aviation change management rests on three disciplines working together. First, risk management: a defensible hazard identification, FHA, PSSA and SSA chain that traces hazards through requirements into verification evidence. Second, process control: a configuration-managed change pipeline with clear roles, gates and acceptance criteria, integrated with the safety management system rather than bolted on. Third, software and equipment assurance: development assurance aligned to ED-153, ED-109A / DO-278A and the EASA Detailed Specifications referenced by 2023/1768, so that the engineering evidence stands up to scrutiny by both the operator’s NCA and EASA.

From paper to deployment

The hardest part of any aviation change is the transition itself — the cut-over from old to new in an operation that must remain safe every minute. AVISU works with both providers and equipment suppliers to plan the deployment in detail: training and competence under Part-PERS, operational rehearsal and simulator validation (AVISIM is often used here), staged commissioning, fallback procedures, post-implementation monitoring, and closure of NCA findings. Treating deployment as a first-class engineering activity is what separates a change that delivers benefit from one that erodes safety margin.