Improvement plan

From the Risk analysis, it is obvious that the most critical risk, that may even mean the cause of failure of the business, is the insufficiently high growth of international flights demand, which makes it unable to justify the internationalization of the airport focused current scope. For this reason, it is necessary to develop an improvement in the design phase to avoid this kind of risk and be prepared for that kind of situation, as stated in the aforementioned Risk analysis.

To do so, a continuous improvement plan methodology is implemented in this particular case, to clearly and specifically take into consideration how the improvement of the design phase must be performed:

Assessment of Current Situation: Possibility of business failure if the growth of international flights demand is not sufficiently high, due to the internationalization of the airport focused current scope.

Rationale: To have a more robust business model, capable to re-adapt to a different external outcome and yet be feasible.

Objective: Having a back-up plan for an easy re-definition of the scope of the airport to an even more national business focused one, that also considers taking cargo operations to re-use the international flights designated infrastructures.

Timeframes for Improvement Initiatives: The airport management team must develop such plan during the initial planning and design phases in a short-term period.

Activities/Task that will be engaged in to Support the Improvement: The airport management team must be able to develop:

• Definition of the current scope of the airport and weight of the national vs. international flights demand forecast.
• Design the operation of the new airport according to the demand forecast.
• Design of the infrastructures according to the designed operation.
• Re-define the scope of the airport if the growth of international flights demand is not sufficiently high to justify the internationalization of the airport focused current scope.
• Re-design the operation of the new airport according to the new demand forecast and the previously designed infrastructures, considering taking cargo operations to re-use the international flights designated infrastructures.
• Re-design the infrastructures if needed to make this possible scope change as easy and costs-saving as possible if it is required to implement it in the future.
• Development of a detailed step by step plan to change the scope of the airport if required.

Overcoming Obstacles:

Communicating the Improvement Effort: To the government and investors, it must be explained that this back-up plan gives robustness to the business and ensures that their investment will give profitability either way. To the design and engineers team, it should be made clear to them the two potential different scopes that the airport must be capable to take, and that the infrastructures and airport operation must be designed considering this particular situation.

Monitoring Plan Progress: The operational performance and efficiency typical indicators (operation time, operations per hour capacity, passengers’ capacity, etc.) for both scopes of the airport operation must be analyzed.

Sustaining the Improvement Effort: Coinciding with the monitoring of the international flights demand variation, a quarterly revision of the operation of the airport, and its suitability for the operation of the new scope if ever needed will be performed, along with a revision and modification of the detailed step by step plan of implementation of the scope change.

Budget and Resource Implications: The development of this back-up plan means a low increase of the initial costs, but ensures a way to avoid the failure of the business and a drastic reduction of the costs that may imply a re-definition of the scope if needed if it had not been previously considered in the design phase.