As aviation returns to its traditional 5% growth curve, airport managers are faced with increasing pressure to build physical capacity to meet growing demand. In parallel, surrounding communities are insisting on greater environmental transparency and accountability and are becoming more aggressive and litigious in their opposition to airport growth. Limits to growth due to community environmental concerns is often referred to as environmental capacity.

Successful airport managers understand that in order to grow they need to manage both physical capacity and environmental capacity. They understand that a proactive program of impact monitoring, noise abatement initiatives and community outreach is the key.

Achieving these outcomes is complex, requiring a broad range of skills to set strategy, develop and implement noise mitigation initiatives and to engage airport stakeholders. Each of these elements requires the support of a comprehensive information set that quantifies impact, tracks trends, answers adhoc questions and complies with regulatory requirements. Above all, the information must be complete, audited and beyond question. The stakes are too high for errors and omissions to destroy years of carefully earned credibility.

The challenge is that obtaining the information of the right accuracy, the right completeness, on time and in the forms needed is a complex task.

The Traditional Approach

Traditionally airports have approached the challenge by buying and managing their own technology throughout its 15 year lifecycle.

Without an alternative, airports have been forced to build the detailed technical skills required to manage the technology. Energy that should be focused on setting policy, managing noise abatement programs and stakeholder outreach is often diverted to technical management.

Managing the technology lifecycle is complex including:

• Market research
• Appointing consultants to prepare technical specifications
• Running a procurement process and contracting a supplier
• Managing a project deployment including consultant costs, internal noise and IT staff costs
• Hiring and training noise staff
• Contracting and managing system maintenance
• Managing a wide variety of parties including the FAA, maintenance contractors, communications and power companies
• Contracting additional capabilities when requirements change
• System upgrades and refreshes throughout its life
• System replacement as it ages

Whilst many airports have taken this approach, it has a number of challenges:

• Not enough time to deal with airport stakeholders
• Unable to answer questions when needed
• Lack of confidence in data
• Lack of accountability
• Key technical staff leave
• System gets out of date
• Procurement complexities and delays
• Delivery delays & internal cost blowouts
• Uncertain ongoing costs

The NoiseOffice™ Approach

NoiseOffice™ is a subscription service providing the information you need to run your airport noise program, including:

• Reliable & precise monitoring of aircraft noise impact
• Routine reports and investigation tools needed to engage stakeholders
• NoiseOffice™ provides the technology and services needed - now and into the future

More specifically, the NoiseOffice™ service provides:

• Data integrity & validation, auditability and long term records management
• Compliance and routine reporting
• Interactive investigation tools
• Ongoing access, management, support & refresh of all necessary technology

NoiseOffice™ Benefits

NoiseOffice™ enables airports to contract NoiseOffice ™ data and information services rather than following a path of system procurement, implementation, training, maintenance & ongoing technology refresh. It enables airports to have staff focused stakeholder engagement and removes the need to establish and maintain a staff of technical experts.

NoiseOffice™ delivers:

Better result

• Achieve world’s best practice - Focus your staff on engaging stakeholder rather than managing technology

Lower risk

• Avoid procurement, deployment and ramp up risk

• Guarantee compliance, responsiveness and independent audit trail

Simpler

Remove need for critical technical mass to sustain operations

Remove technology refresh costs and diversion

Lower cost

• Reduce cost of operation through staff reduction
• Remove procurement & refresh costs

NoiseOffice™ responds to the problems of the traditional approach to airport noise management, providing the information you need to run your airport noise program.

NoiseOffice™ provides a better solution.

NoiseOffice™ Experience

Lochard has been delivering NoiseOffice services to airports since 2004. Currently a range of different services are delivered to AirServices Australia, the BAA London airports, Heathrow / Gatwick and Stansted, Newcastle International airport and Wellington airport in New Zealand. Experience has shown a reduction in the Total Cost of Operation in each case and proven Lochard’s service delivery capability.

Services are delivered through the Lochard Operations Centre in Melbourne operating 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. A Service Delivery Manager is appointed locally to the airport to ensure that the service meets the agreed service level and to act as a contact point within the client's time zone.

NoiseOffice™ Technology

The NoiseOffice™ service is delivered using Lochard’s state of the art ANOMS8 technology running in our 24 hour Class A data center. The onsite data collection server manages the data sources from radar and flight systems and from the noise monitoring terminals. Data is securely streamed to Lochard’s data center where our 24 hour team of experts monitor and manage data collection and processing, data validation and grooming and report generation.

NoiseOffice ensures that you have the information you need to run your noise management program when you need it.

NoiseOffice™ Payment Plans

The NoiseOffice™ service is available on a simple all inclusive monthly payment. NoiseOffice has been proven to deliver savings of 10-15% on the total cost of ownership and operation when compared with the traditional "purchase and operate" model.

Budgetary Estimates

NoiseOffice™ service packages can be tailored to suit the unique requirements of each client.

Deployment Schedule

The deployment of the NoiseOffice™ service is typically completed within 4-6 months of order. The timing is primarily dictated by the selection and approval process for noise monitoring terminal sites.

NoiseOffice Brochure