The strategy of a High Reliability Organisation

Skyguide maintains a clear strategic alignment that is derived from its government mandate. The quality of the services it provides must be continuously further improved. Drawing its inspiration from the values maintained by a High Reliability Organisation, the company adopted a four-point plan to implement its strategy at the beginning of 2008.

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Political mandate and strategy
The Swiss Federal Council prescribes a clear strategic direction for skyguide every four years. This is based on government aviation policy, and is submitted for comment to all the parties involved. Skyguide’s strategy translates these government specifications into actions and approaches which also pay due and full regard to additional market considerations. The resulting strategy is thus an expression of Swiss political will that fully accommodates business perspectives and concerns.

HRO positioning
A High Reliability Organisation (HRO) will regard the emergence of abnormalities as an unavoidable feature of complex organisations and their subsystems. Working on this assumption, the HRO will strive to learn from past events, anticipate or detect unexpected abnormalities and respond accordingly to minimise their impact. Skyguide has clearly and unequivocally adopted this HRO philosophy.

A four-point plan
At the beginning of 2008, skyguide fleshed out its overall corporate strategy and adopted a new four-point plan in preparation for anticipated developments in the European air traffic management field. The actions resolved include further strengthening the newly-defined companywide safety culture, solving the structural problem which is presently resulting in an earnings shortfall, increasing airspace capacity and adopting a modular service provision approach.

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