Company insight
sense, airport design is about far more than simply laying down asphalt. On the contrary, it merely represents the first stage in a constant fight for efficiency and optimisation. As Frost puts it: “They’re making money – and they’d like to make more money.”
A comprehensive digital system Airport designers are clearly conscious of these pressures – a fact reflected by how many rely on design and simulation kits. As long ago as 2016, 34% of major US airports planned major investments in digital technologies like interactive wayfinding. Not that all set-ups are created equal. Among other things, some options only offer pure design tools, without guiding engineers through the consequences of their builds. Transoft, on the other hand, is different. Largely thanks to a range of thoughtful business acquisitions, the firm boasts one of the most comprehensive digital systems on the market.
everywhere, smoothing the design process and saving time and money. Yet, as Frost himself concedes, the tool cannot totally succeed in isolation. “It doesn’t tell you anything about the performance of a system,” he says. “It only tells you that you’ve satisfied the geometry.” Despite AviPLAN’s undoubted strengths, you get the sense that it really comes into its own when combined with AirTOP. The second pillar of the Transoft’s aviation programme, AirTOP takes AviPLAN designs and plugs them into a fast-time simulation. That allows designers to understand how well their theoretical plans actually work – before builders ever arrive on site. All this would be pointless without robust modelling. But as Mercado says, AirTOP excels here too. “It can be used to assess the performance of different airside designs,” he explains. “That means simulating aircraft moving on taxiways, departing from parking positions or moving to the runway.”
“[AirTOP] can be used to assess the performance of different airside designs. That means simulating aircraft moving on taxiways, departing from parking positions or moving to the runway.”
Gustavo Mercado
That is immediately clear from AviPLAN, the first stage of the company’s aviation framework. A standard CAD-based tool for the design of airport airside facilities, it makes designing runways, taxiways and aprons easy. That begins, Frost says, with regulation. Unsurprisingly, bodies like the FAA have a torrent of rules about airfield specifications, encompassing everything from runway length to off-tracking markers. Fortunately, AviPLAN integrates these specifications into the platform, meaning, as Frost puts it, that designers can easily “draw a bunch of things out” without ever falling foul of the rules. Beyond these fundamentals, meanwhile, AviPLAN also helps designers make areas more inclusive – for instance by keeping passenger boarding bridges wide enough for wheelchair users. To put it another way, AviPLAN is clearly a must for aviation engineers
Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
At the same time, AirTOP seamlessly models the hubbub of airport life in other ways, for instance if aircraft must be de-iced. At its most sophisticated, AirTOP can even be fitted with realistic flight schedules, giving engineers a sense of how their designs will cope with delays or bottlenecks. Of course, this also ensures ground handlers can evaluate different strategies for allocating service vehicles to aircraft – selecting those that reduce flight delays.
Digital wins
Nor does the design process finish there. Rather, the insights gleaned from AirTOP can then be fed back into AviPLAN, tweaking a plan until it offers maximum efficiency at minimum cost. Frost is similarly keen to emphasise the benefits of a “circular” design strategy, one that
persists even after a project is nominally over. This is in stark contrast to many engineers, who typically focus on design during a build’s early stages. If, for example, managers feed AirTOP with real flight information once an airport is up and running, they are more likely to notice chokepoints. That, in turn, could lead to revamped scheduling. Given the US alone loses around $30bn to delayed flights each year, these solutions are clearly needed. More broadly, adding new information
to Transoft’s tools can help airports catch problems before they become too expensive to ignore. “If you’re worried about passenger queuing in the terminal,” Frost asks rhetorically, “at what point do you need to provide more services?” It goes without saying that planning can promote savings in other ways too. Rather than forking out millions to build a new runway, for example, what if Transoft could prove that an existing space could be adapted instead? That is shadowed by planning for unforeseen disasters. As Iceland’s 2010 volcanic eruption and the Covid-19 crisis dramatically proved, airliners sometimes have to land in a hurry. But rather than sending them to the nearest runway – which can cause confusion and high bills later – Transoft’s platforms can help operators and airports prepare for all eventualities in advance. All this is echoed by even more ambitious strategies. Frost, for his part, emphasises the draws of so-called digital twins. This essentially means keeping a continuously updated model of a facility on AviPLAN and AirTOP, allowing officials to immediately appreciate everything that is happening at an airport. From there, they can collate disparate data sources and adjust investment decisions accordingly. It helps that Transoft supports clients far beyond the platforms themselves. Specialised training ensures users exploit the power of AviPLAN and AirTOP to the full. Constant regulation monitoring means airports will never be caught short by a change in the rules. The point, says Frost, is to go “above and beyond”. Understand everything Transoft is doing and it is hard to disagree. ●
www.transoftsolutions.com 37
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