Key risks - Airservices Australia Corporate Plan 2024

Risk oversight and management Key risks

We manage a variety of risks associated with the success of this corporate plan. We mitigate these risks by proactively identifying and assessing them, implementing controls, and adapting strategies to maintain operational stability and resilience.

We are also continually adjusting and adapting our operating model and transformation portfolios to fulfil our purpose and meet the expectations of our stakeholders efficiently. These actions may inherently change our risk profile, which we continue to monitor and manage. The key known risks and mitigations are summarised below:

Risk	Mitigation
There is an inherent and enduring risk to the safety of air navigation in all our services.	We regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration in everything we do. We have a mature safety-management system embedded into all aspects of our operations including workforce and fatigue management, technological systems, and procedures and processes.
Our commitment to improving our quality of service delivers the service level our customers expect. This is reliant upon our ability to: grow and maintain a sufficient number of and efficiently deploy a workforce of air traffic controllers and aviation rescue fire fighters foster a culture of high performance comprised of engaged, diverse and inclusive people.	We carefully manage the supply and availability of our operational workforces. We have a broad range of strategies to maximise workforce availability. We are increasing our supply of air traffic controllers through an increased pipeline of ab initio’s and targeted international recruitment. Additionally, we are maturing our leadership capabilities to enhance productivity and engagement. We are prioritising cultural transformation, which includes embedding a culture of trust, care and accountability, and promoting our reconciliationaction plan and employee networks.
Our commitment is to, as far as practicable, protect the environment from the effects of, and effects associated with, aircraft operations including aircraft noise. This relies on our ability to: understand and accurately forecast the effects of aircraft operations including noise undertake genuine engagement with impacted communities demonstrate that we minimise the impacts of aircraft operations on the environment and community in our end-to-end flight path design and airspace management.	We continue to enhance our people capabilities and systems with new and updated methodologies as they are researched and adopted by industry. This enhances our ability to understand and accurately forecast the effects of aircraft operations including noise. A significant focus for Airservices is improving the way in which we undertake genuine engagement with impacted communities. We are committed to operating in accordance with our community engagement standard jointly developed with our communities. We take a community-by-design approach to flight path and airspace design which recognises that communities are not equally affected by noise. We consider community impacts on a case-by-case basis, with the ultimate aim of creating a more sustainable and equitable solution for managing aircraft operations and the resulting noise. We have, and continue to improve, outcomes for communities through our noise action plans and post-implementation reviews, including at Brisbane.
Our commitment to environmental sustainability and combatting climate change relies on our ability to reduce our net emissions. Climate change poses significant risk to our services as increasing frequency and severity of significant weather events disrupt services, limit capacity, and/or damage our infrastructure.	We recognise our responsibility to look after and safeguard our environment and ensure efficient management of natural resources, targeting net zero emissions by 2050. We are taking direct action to improve the efficiency of our facilities, increase the use of renewable energy, reduce resource use, and improve our management of wastewater. We are undertaking work to manage the effects of climate change and create resilience in our operations, as we modernise our services and invest in assets.
Our commitment to realise new and improved capabilities for the industry’s benefit through our transformation portfolios relies on our ability to deliver projects and realise change. This includes delivering our contribution to the opening of Western Sydney International Airport and OneSKY.	We are focused on maturing our portfolio and project delivery capabilities with enhanced processes based on best practice. Additionally, we are prioritising our transformation portfolios to focus our change on a reduced number of high priority initiatives.
Our commitment to financial sustainability is built upon factors that are beyond the control of Airservices. The most significant unknowns are traffic volumes, regulated prices and inflationary costs.	We are using an independent expert to assist in modelling our corporate financial plan, including understanding traffic sensitivities and economic impacts. We are actively pursuing opportunities to become more efficient and reduce transaction costs. We are achieving this by making our business model and capabilities more efficient and increasing some capacity without significant increases in cost. We are reviewing alternate approaches to our capital structure to better underpin financial sustainability into the future. We are actively engaging with industry stakeholders and the ACCC on regulated pricing. Our prices have reduced by more than 24% in real terms since 2016.
Our commitment to the responsible management of PFAS relies upon our ability to: execute strategies to identify, manage, and where practicable remediate contamination fund the costs and liabilities associated with PFAS contamination and its remediation.	We continue to work closely with our stakeholders to ensure we are all aligned on the strategies for the responsible identification, management, and remediation activities for PFAS. We are currently funding these activities through our operating budget; however, we are actively working with our stakeholders to devise a more suitable funding model. We recognise that the full cost of remediation is beyond the capacity of our current funding model. Consequently, it is likely that we will need support from the Commonwealth Government and the airports.

Risk

Mitigation

There is an inherent and enduring risk to the safety of air navigation in all our services.

We regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration in everything we do.

We have a mature safety-management system embedded into all aspects of our operations including workforce and fatigue management, technological systems, and procedures and processes.

Our commitment to improving our quality of service delivers the service level our customers expect. This is reliant upon our ability to:

grow and maintain a sufficient number of and efficiently deploy a workforce of air traffic controllers and aviation rescue fire fighters
foster a culture of high performance comprised of engaged, diverse and inclusive people.

We carefully manage the supply and availability of our operational workforces. We have a broad range of strategies to maximise workforce availability.

We are increasing our supply of air traffic controllers through an increased pipeline of ab initio’s and targeted international recruitment.

Additionally, we are maturing our leadership capabilities to enhance productivity and engagement.

We are prioritising cultural transformation, which includes embedding a culture of trust, care and accountability, and promoting our reconciliationaction plan and employee networks.

Our commitment is to, as far as practicable, protect the environment from the effects of, and effects associated with, aircraft operations including aircraft noise. This relies on our ability to:

understand and accurately forecast the effects of aircraft operations including noise
undertake genuine engagement with impacted communities
demonstrate that we minimise the impacts of aircraft operations on the environment and community in our end-to-end flight path design and airspace management.

We continue to enhance our people capabilities and systems with new and updated methodologies as they are researched and adopted by industry. This enhances our ability to understand and accurately forecast the effects of aircraft operations including noise.

A significant focus for Airservices is improving the way in which we undertake genuine engagement with impacted communities. We are committed to operating in accordance with our community engagement standard jointly developed with our communities.

We take a community-by-design approach to flight path and airspace design which recognises that communities are not equally affected by noise. We consider community impacts on a case-by-case basis, with the ultimate aim of creating a more sustainable and equitable solution for managing aircraft operations and the resulting noise.

We have, and continue to improve, outcomes for communities through our noise action plans and post-implementation reviews, including at Brisbane.

Our commitment to environmental sustainability and combatting climate change relies on our ability to reduce our net emissions. Climate change poses significant risk to our services as increasing frequency and severity of significant weather events disrupt services, limit capacity, and/or damage our infrastructure.

We recognise our responsibility to look after and safeguard our environment and ensure efficient management of natural resources, targeting net zero emissions by 2050.

We are taking direct action to improve the efficiency of our facilities, increase the use of renewable energy, reduce resource use, and improve our management of wastewater.

We are undertaking work to manage the effects of climate change and create resilience in our operations, as we modernise our services and invest in assets.

Our commitment to realise new and improved capabilities for the industry’s benefit through our transformation portfolios relies on our ability to deliver projects and realise change. This includes delivering our contribution to the opening of Western Sydney International Airport and OneSKY.

We are focused on maturing our portfolio and project delivery capabilities with enhanced processes based on best practice.

Additionally, we are prioritising our transformation portfolios to focus our change on a reduced number of high priority initiatives.

Our commitment to financial sustainability is built upon factors that are beyond the control of Airservices. The most significant unknowns are traffic volumes, regulated prices and inflationary costs.

We are using an independent expert to assist in modelling our corporate financial plan, including understanding traffic sensitivities and economic impacts.

We are actively pursuing opportunities to become more efficient and reduce transaction costs. We are achieving this by making our business model and capabilities more efficient and increasing some capacity without significant increases in cost.

We are reviewing alternate approaches to our capital structure to better underpin financial sustainability into the future.

We are actively engaging with industry stakeholders and the ACCC on regulated pricing. Our prices have reduced by more than 24% in real terms since 2016.

Our commitment to the responsible management of PFAS relies upon our ability to:

execute strategies to identify, manage, and where practicable remediate contamination
fund the costs and liabilities associated with PFAS contamination and its remediation.

We continue to work closely with our stakeholders to ensure we are all aligned on the strategies for the responsible identification, management, and remediation activities for PFAS.

We are currently funding these activities through our operating budget; however, we are actively working with our stakeholders to devise a more suitable funding model.

We recognise that the full cost of remediation is beyond the capacity of our current funding model. Consequently, it is likely that we will need support from the Commonwealth Government and the airports.