En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) is one of the FAA’s flagship projects that was supposed to be fully operational at all of the FAA en-route facilities by the end of last year. Formal acceptance took place in October 2007 and Lockheed Martin, ERAM’s manufacturer could be proud of having delivered the new system on time and within budget. As it turned out, their happiness was a tad premature. The system was running in operational trial mode in Seattle and Salt Lake City and a host of software problems arose resulting in the full-delivery date slipping to 2014. OOOOps!
Last year the US Transportation Department’s Inspector General went so far as to publicly name the problems ERAM was struggling with. These are the interfaces with other ATC facilities, the aircraft data labels on the controller displays and the way handoffs are processed. None of these areas represent revolutionary new ways of working. ATC systems the world over can do such things and one cannot but wonder: what was Lockheed Martin doing wrong so that they do not work well in ERAM? Or were the requirements such that they in fact became a system-designer’s nightmare as they struggled to keep up with the FAA’s requirement creep? Getting things back on track will cost a cool 500 million bucks extra and then we did not consider the extra costs the delay in operational introduction will cause the industry in general.
There is one more item in the long list of things to correct that sounds almost incredible to be true. The software will have to be tailored for the individual locations to meet the local needs says the FAA. Local needs, like different airspace configurations. So, those who created this software were not aware of the fact that each control centre, however standardized it may be, still has many local specifics that any new system will have to accommodate? Obviously, there is something very wrong with this picture.
Considering that ERAM’s functionality is also essential as the basis for NextGen, its problems and delays inevitably impact NextGen too. Of course one can also look at this as a kind of pre-NextGen exercise that will hopefully provide a few lessons in what to avoid and how in the much bigger project.
Of course ERAM did not escape the effects of the two-week FAA shutdown either. Implementation at the additional sites was halted and this will impact how far the 2011 goals can be met with the effects possibly rippling into next year also.
Is it really that difficult to build an ATC system that is not rife with glitches?