The National Integrated Air Traffic Control Centre, the name given to the largest developmental and investment project in the history of Air Navigation Services of the Czech Republic, was a project that ran between 2001 and 2007. This was an important period for the project itself and for the lives of the people responsible for its practical implementation and successful completion.

As with all projects that aim to fundamentally change and improve the quality and standard of a certain area of human activity, the need to build a new air traffic control centre was brought about by a complex of reasons resulting from the dramatic development of civil aviation on both the European and global scale. No less important a reason was the objective conditions for providing air traffic services in the Czech Republic.

The Technical Block at Prague Airport witnessed a number of prominent changes in the course of over thirty years. The spatial demands of operating stations were continuously increasing, new, modern technical systems were installed in the building and backed-up energy networks and information technology distribution systems were built. The extension of a new control tower, a very demanding job from the building perspective, was undertaken at the Technical Block in 1997. In spite of all modernisation and all efforts at expansion, it became clear in 2000 that the construction of a new centre was unavoidable. Another important reason was the ever-growing demand by air carriers for Czech airspace. The volume of air traffic in the Czech airspace had tripled since the establishment of Air Navigation Services of the Czech Republic in 1995 and it was therefore logical that there would be higher demands on safety, quality and the capacity of the ATM system.

Hence the task facing the members of the project team in 2001, when the decision was made to build the new centre, can be summarised in a single sentence: Building and putting into operation a new, modern air traffic control centre to fulfil its purpose for at least thirty years to come in order to meet the demanding requirements on the safety and quality of services provided and to meet the demands of an undisturbed work environment.

The actual IATCC Prague project was divided into three independent sub-projects:

The mission of the Construction sub-project was to ensure and manage the construction of IATCC Prague according to the approved project documentation, including the assurance of the infrastructure for problem-free use of the centre.

The ATM systems sub-project incorporated other activities which were divided according to the specialisations of the ATM systems defined for the new centre such that all required systems needed in order to begin provision of air traffic services from IATCC Prague were tested as part of trial operation and put into operational use.

The ATM procedures sub-project dealt with tasks intended to determine the basic principles and rules of work technics, and after verifying these using safety studies and approval to further elaborate them in services directives for individual workplaces at the new centre.

The uniform element which ran through all the stages of project implementation was therefore mutual trust and intensive cooperation.  This exceedingly important and indispensable element manifested itself in the activities of members working within individual sub-projects and influenced the everyday activity of strategic partners – project manager, general designer and general contractor.

The final result was the creation of a coherent team that worked well and whose members were cooperating and communicating with each other.  This is why the IATCC Prague project could be completed to the highest quality complying with the material, time and finance schedules. The professional project management and the timing of implementation of the new air traffic control centre were an assurance that safe air traffic services would also be provided at the highest level in Czech airspace in the future.

You can download book about IATCC project here:

IATCC - Integrated Air Traffic Control Centre CR 2003-2007 (pdf document 9,8MB)