[Peetwo]

Harfwit match fit & ready for Estimates -

In an exclusive Oz Aviation article today, Harfwit defends the ASA OneSKY tender process and some of the negative findings from the ANAO audit report... :

Airservices chief says OneSKY tenderer chosen on value for money and technical risk

May 22, 2017 by Gerard Frawley 

Airservices chief executive Jason Harfield speaking at Waypoint 2016. (Airservices)

Thales’ bid to supply Australia’s new air traffic management system under the $600 million OneSKY program was selected on the basis of best value for money when technical risk was taken into account, Airservices Australia chief executive Jason Harfield says.

Last month the Australian National Audit Office warned that Australia could end up paying too much for the new combined civil and military air traffic management system (or CMATS), finding in a report into the OneSKY tender process that it “is not clearly evident that the successful tender offered the best value for money” and that “the tenderer that submitted the highest acquisition and support prices was assessed to offer the lowest cost solution”.

However, in an interview with Australian Aviation Harfield defended the robustness of the OneSKY tender evaluation process while conceding that contract negotiations had taken longer than anticipated.

“Value for money… is not just the price that you pay. You’ve actually got to have the thing work and operate, and there are much more greater considerations with value for money,” Harfield told Australian Aviation earlier this month.

The Airservices chief noted there were five different assessment criteria in the OneSKY tender: safety, technical risk, transition arrangements, long-term relationships and financial and commercial considerations.

“With an air traffic control system, you can’t say that all of those are equal … in a ranking. You’ve got to put it all together and look at it,” Harfield said.

“So you could have somebody really strong technically but very weak on the transition between the two systems. Well, that transition is just as important as making sure that the system works.”

Another bidder could offer a comparatively more expensive tender but still offer better value for money, he said.

In that case, “there would be better value for money in a proposition with an acceptable level of risk than one that is not as strong on the safety piece, not very good with the transition, not [the best] long-term support, but it’s really cheap.”

Harfield also stressed that the decision to downselect Thales was unanimous across Airservices and the Department of Defence.

“All of the decisions at all of the levels all the way through the process were unanimous between Defence and Airservices executives. If there were really big issues in there, you would see that, you wouldn’t get that unanimity.”

The decision to select Thales for OneSKY was announced in February 2015, but the main acquisition contract for the project is still yet to be signed.

Negotiations to finalise that contract are still on-going but should be completed in the third quarter of this year, if not before the end of June 30, Harfield said.

“Our issues have all been around the commercial rather than the actual technicalities of it,” he said of contract negotiations.

“We originally thought that we would end up with more than one tender going into the last phase of negotiations, and have parallel negotiations. But as it turned out, there was only one tender that went into the negotiations.

“We were quite concerned with that at the time, because you’ve got somebody that has been technically superior, [but] having only one tender though, you end up losing commercial or competitive tension in the tender,” Harfield explained.

Instead, Harfield said, initial work to implement OneSKY was initiated under advanced work supply agreements.

“We can work through all of those issues while not committing to a big fixed price contract [prematurely], and then working out there’s a whole lot of issues and risks,” he said.

“In doing that, the negotiations have gone longer than what we have expected, and that’s really because we haven’t actually got to the commercially acceptable parameters that we’ve actually wanted to achieve.”

Thanks to those advance work agreements, initial transition work to the new system will still commence in 2018, starting with new voice switches. However, final delivery of the system is now likely to occur in 2023, rather than 2021 as originally planned.

“The plan is we begin transition activities next year. We were hoping, originally, that in defence terms, to have FOC [full operating capability] around 2021, 2022, but we’ve given ourselves a bit of room out the back to 2023, knowing that we’re possibly going to come across some more problems in the rollout.”

[*]
 
Hmm...interesting timing especially when you consider...
"...Harfield told Australian Aviation earlier this month..."

Oh well it looks like Harfwit will be 'match fit' and ready for all comers tomorrow at Senate Estimates - straight up after the 1.5 hrs of ANAO Q&A session of course...

Meanwhile in another hemisphere and another Parliament far, far, away - 

Via wpxi.com:

House chairman pushes privatizing air traffic control in US
by: KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Updated: May 17, 2017 - 3:21 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - A House Republican committee chairman called on lawmakers Wednesday to turn the nation's air traffic control operations over to a new, non-profit corporation, saying no other infrastructure change has as much potential to improve travel for the average American flyer.

President Donald Trump has also called for privatizing air traffic control operations, suggesting placing them under an "independent, non-governmental organization" to make the system more efficient while maintaining safety.

Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told colleagues his top priority this year is to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration along those lines. He said the effort he'll pursue will fund the new corporation through fees assessed for air traffic services and will free the operations from government dysfunction and the uncertainty of the annual appropriations process.

He said the FAA has been trying to put in place a high-tech system for air traffic controllers for nearly three decades, but progress has been incremental. Ultimately, he said, it makes sense to remove the FAA as a transportation service provider and maintain its role as a regulator of air safety. He said that would lead to a decrease in flight delays and ease congestion.

"The true risk lies in doing nothing," Shuster said.

But Shuster faces opposition from the committee's Democratic members and unions representing air traffic controllers. They fear that turning financing decisions over to a corporation would subject the system to economic hardships and particularly could hurt flight operations at smaller airports.

Airlines have been lobbying vigorously for the changes Shuster seeks. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., pointed out they were not invited to testify Wednesday, alluding to recent controversies such as the dragging of a passenger off a United flight. He said their absence shows that supporters of privatization know Americans aren't interested in giving more control over to the airlines.

DeFazio said the biggest obstacle to updating air traffic systems has been the broken budget process in Congress and unstable funding from lawmakers.

The privatization debate has been going on for decades. The Clinton administration proposed moving air traffic control operations out of FAA to a corporation owned by the government in 1995. Dorothy Robyn, a special assistant to the president on economic policy, told lawmakers that only four nations at that time had moved traffic control operations outside of traditional government operations, and Clinton's proposal was "dead on arrival on Capitol Hill." Now, some 60 countries have transferred their air traffic control operations, she said.

"I think it is a mistake to view this proposal as ideological," Robyn said.

Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the association will consider supporting a new entity to run air traffic control operations, but it cannot be a for-profit corporation. He said the new system would also have to ensure that air traffic control workers' pay and benefits are protected, and that it continue to serve rural communities, which are worried that privatization would lead to less money for their airports.

"The last thing we want to do is create a system that's unfair to different users," Shuster told reporters after the hearing.

The congressman said he expects the committee to hold one or two more hearings before voting on a bill. A similar effort stalled last year, but Shuster is counting on an "engaged" White House to enhance prospects this year.

[*]&.. via the Hill.com:

Defense secretary backs plan to spin off air traffic control
BY MELANIE ZANONA - 05/17/17 03:57 PM EDT  11

Proponents of separating air traffic control from the federal government have picked up a new supporter: the Department of Defense (DOD).

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in a recent letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that the department is “supportive of a possible privatization of ATC services and recognizes the potential risks.”

Mattis said DOD has formed an ad hoc committee to assess the agency’s relationship with air traffic control, delineate any linkages that would be necessary and “ensure privatization efforts going forward preserve our national security interests.”

The support from Mattis removes one major hurdle for proponents of the spin-off plan, as critics have long cited national security concerns from the defense community as a major reason for opposing the idea.

“It’s a huge deal,” Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told reporters. “You have senators running around saying that’s one of the reasons not to do it. And Secretary Mattis is saying we support it.”

But the spin-off proposal, which President Trump voiced support for in his budget blueprint, has long been divisive on Capitol Hill and is still likely to face an uphill battle in Congress.

Efforts to advance the idea in a long-term reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stalled on the House floor last year.

And lawmakers continued to clash over the contentious policy proposal during a heated hearing on the issue Wednesday.

The plan — a top priority for most of the nation’s major airlines — would transfer air traffic control operations from the FAA to a nonprofit or non-governmental agency.

The corporation, which would have a board appointed by users of the system, would raise money through user fees and the private sector. The spinoff model would also remove 30,000 FAA employees from the federal payroll, where workers are subject to salary caps.

While the FAA would still maintain safety oversight and regulate the national airspace, the plan would represent a dramatic shift in how the country manages its air traffic control operations.

Supporters say it’s necessary to speed up long-stalled modernization efforts and to avoid the financial and political uncertainty of the annual appropriations process. Shuster showed off stacks of paper strips at the hearing to demonstrate how air traffic controllers track flights.

“The fact is, the FAA’s infrastructure is increasingly obsolete, and its technology is still cemented in the last century,” Shuster said at the hearing. “As a result, shocking amounts of tax dollars and time have been wasted over the last 35 years.”

But many Democrats and GOP tax writers and appropriators have major reservations about the spin-off idea.

Their chief concern is handing over the power to collect fees to a nongovernmental agency and removing operations from congressional oversight.

Critics also fear that the spin-off model would give major airlines outsize power over air traffic control operations.

“Who is not testifying today? The airline CEOs,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), ranking member on the panel. “Perhaps they recognize that the American people are not interested in giving more control to the airlines when, between dragging a passenger off a plane and massive computer failures, they can't even get their own houses in order.”

MTF...P2