A few words from Director and Principal Consultant, Kel Kirkland
Kel has 32 years experience within the UK ATM sector and has been delivering complex solutions worldwide since 2009.
An experienced UK CAA-licensed air traffic controller, Kel held both tower and radar ratings at two busy international airports in the UK. Added to this, is Kel’s 10 years of experience in Airport General Manager roles, accountable for the delivery of a safe ATM service.
Kel also managed the ATC operation in support of Aberdeen Airport and associated offshore oil and gas exploration ATM environments.
Since 2009, Kel has delivered projects to airport and ANSP customers across the United Kingdom, including key airspace change projects such as offshore wind farm mitigations and the introduction of controlled airspace around Farnborough Airport.
Overseas, Kel has delivered projects in Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, Hong Kong, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Australia, the United States and India.
As a project solution technical lead, Kel developed and delivered a wide variety of projects in support of new runways, enhanced airport capacity, high-intensity runway operations and airspace change at local and national level.
Kel has been instrumental in many of the most exciting and complex wind energy mitigation projects which have helped the United Kingdom overcome radar interference issues. These include the Greater Wash Regional Solution and the world’s first infill radar solution at Whitelee in Scotland.
So what is Kel’s philosophy for how ATSIX can help customers deliver their complex ATM solutions?
“For my entire career, I have strived to deliver a quality service to aviation stakeholders – initially as a controller, providing tower and radar services to pilots and airlines, to my management responsibilities for overall ATM service delivery to airports, through to my consultancy roles, delivering ATM projects to key stakeholders and customers.
The thread which joins all of those activities is how people interact – how small teams of experts work alongside project and customer key stakeholders to drive solutions into service. I believe that small and medium sized teams of Subject Matter Experts will play an increased role in providing targeted and short/medium term expertise to support the ambitions of airports, ANSPs and airlines.
The global pandemic and ongoing impact upon the aviation sector is extreme. However, whilst damaging in the short term, it drives new and more efficient ways of bringing the most experienced SMEs into projects – whether that be a team of 2 ATM experts or a much larger team of airspace and procedure designers, analysts and safety or human factors specialists.
Many projects of the near future will demand access to world class expertise without the onerous overheads of the traditional model. ATSIX can integrate the ATM expertise and technical leadership that your projects demand. Our flexible SME resources typically have 20-35 years experience in complex and demanding ATM environments and, crucially, have a proven track record in working effectively with a wide variety of customers and key stakeholders. Our people are people people!”