About
Ability to execute
Every procurement, design review and board asks the same question of a programme: can these people deliver this? Operators ask it of the suppliers bidding for their business. Suppliers ask it of themselves before they bid. Going Systems brings people who have answered it many times, from the early design stage through procurement, delivery and operation, on either side of that table.
What the test asks
Evaluators look past the promise for the proof that it can be kept
A credible answer to “can these people deliver this?” is made of specific things, and an experienced evaluator looks for each of them.
| Stage | What they look for | What a credible answer shows |
|---|---|---|
| What will be built | Design excellence | A solution design of a quality the evaluator can trust: an architecture that integrates with what the airport already runs, performs at its peaks and scales with the airport, fails safely, and can be operated by the team that will inherit it. Most delivery risk is designed in or designed out here. |
| Secure by design | Security and sovereignty built into the architecture rather than added at audit: hosting and data residency that meet the regulator, identity and access designed for airport staff and contractors, and an incident response the operator can run. For critical information infrastructure this is the gate everything else waits behind. | |
| Inclusive and accessible | Inclusiveness in airport systems and services is essential: it gives every traveller accessibility, safety and dignity, whatever their ability or background. Touchpoints and processes that work for reduced mobility, low vision, every language and the unfamiliar traveller, and for staff of every level of experience. Accessibility is regulated in most of the markets we work in, and an evaluator will check it. | |
| How it gets there | An executable plan | A migration and cutover plan that names the sequence, the dependencies, the fallback and the people responsible for each step, and that survives a hard question about any of them. |
| A team that can deliver | Named people with the right experience, a committed allocation for the life of the programme, and a governance structure that says who decides and how quickly. | |
| Training, handover and governance built in | Training designed for the operational teams, a handover that leaves them running the system, and governance that continues into operation rather than ending at acceptance. | |
| How it runs | Support and maintenance designed | How the system will be supported and maintained after go-live: the team structure, the tools, the escalation paths and the local presence, written down before the contract is signed. |
| Release management | A plan for how changes, upgrades and fixes reach a live airport without disrupting it, and who owns that process on each side. | |
| Terms that hold in operation | KPIs and SLAs that measure what the airport cares about, service credits and acceptance criteria that mean something, and contract terms that still make sense in year seven. |
Field note: the questions that test design excellence
Operations is the longest part
Go-live is a day. Operation is the next ten years
Most of an engagement’s life, and most of its cost, is the period after the system is in service. So the weight of the design falls on how the teams will be structured, the tools they will use, how the system will be supported and maintained, the KPIs and SLAs it will be held to, the contract terms that govern it, and how releases will be managed year after year.
Going Systems designs those things in from the first conversation, because a programme that only plans to go-live has planned the shortest part.
Where the test is set
Ability to execute is scored in procurement and decided earlier: in requirements that let a capable supplier show what it can do, in a design a supplier can build and a team can run, and in the people who will carry the programme through. That is why the best time to bring Going Systems in is before the design is fixed.
What we bring to it
Delivery record
Our people have designed, sold or taken into live operation the core systems at more than 100 airports across Asia Pacific, the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, including greenfield openings and full system replacements. That includes eleven years directing delivery, with twenty to thirty airport projects running at any one time.
Commercial understanding
We have built the cost and revenue model on every deal we have led, written and reviewed the proposals, negotiated them to signature, and compared our solutions against competitors from the inside. Three of those pursuits were greenfield airports, and all three were won.
Systems knowledge
We know the systems from the inside: AMS and AODB, resource management, FIDS, common use, self-service and bag drop, baggage reconciliation, aeronautical and non-aeronautical billing, biometrics, digital identity and border control. We have designed, sold and delivered each of them, which is a different kind of knowledge from having specified them.
Programme governance
We have chaired bid committees, solution reviews and change boards, owned stage-gate processes and governed cutovers. Those are the habits that keep a programme clear about where it stands.
The right people
Each engagement is led by the principal best matched to it, drawn from a network of senior airport and travel technology practitioners, with a named principal accountable to you for the quality of the work from start to finish.