Visit to Heathrow’s Central Airport Operations Centre (APOC)

At least twice a year, the HPF schedule ‘deep-dives’ into issues which we consider are of particular importance to the passenger but also employees and the wider community – for example winter preparedness, extra-care needs, the operation of the UK Border.

In that context, earlier this month, the HPF considered risk and resilience and was joined by two members of the H8 Strategic Sub-Committee who had taken a keen interest in the topic.

We visited the Heathrow Airport Operations Centre within the Compass Centre. Heathrow’s state-of-the-art, 24/7 ‘nerve centre’ where they monitor almost every variable you can think of – within the airport, around the airport, and then throughout the south-east, and way beyond the UK’s shores.

Spencer Adaway, Heathrow’s Director of Operational Delivery, and his team described in detail both the monitoring side and the response side of the resilience equation.

Taking us through the escalation process and the coordination with all the key agencies and user groups.

Key Takeaways

• Risk comes in many forms. The APOC team exist to predict, mitigate and respond.

• Established and tested response procedures to a number of scenarios are reviewed regularly, and we found the team’s honesty around learning from real-life incidents reassuring.

• Full-scale mock incident exercises (the most recent based on railway evacuation) are an integral part of preparedness.

• Communication of an incident is a critical area. We discussed this in some detail, and we left our session with the belief that this is an area where Heathrow are determined to improve.