Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) Case Study
Enhancing Control and Compliance at Reduced Costs – CVG Airport’s Adoption of the Volan Positioning System
Executive Summary
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) has embarked on a groundbreaking initiative to enhance airport safety and efficiency. By implementing the Volan Positioning System (VPS), a cutting-edge, solar-powered, AI-driven location monitoring network, CVG is aligning with the latest FAA safety regulations improving its span of control and saving money.
This case study explores the challenges CVG has faced, the innovative solution provided by VPS, the results of its implementation, and the broader implications for airport operations and safety.
The Opportunity
CVG Airport is the 6th largest cargo airport in North America and 12th largest globally. Every year, about 9 million passengers safely transit through CVG’s terminal and concourses. Like countless other airports, CVG frequently relies on contract construction workers to modernize and repair infrastructure across its 7,700-acre campus.
To comply with FAA Safety Management System regulations for a manageable span of control, trained CVG employees escort construction workers while the construction personnel are performing work on airport property. This is to ensure that construction personnel and equipment don’t accidentally find their way onto restricted areas, such as active taxiways or runways, thus jeopardizing the safety and security of passengers and aircraft. However, sourcing, training, deploying, and managing an adequate number of airport personnel to provide a proper span of control over construction workers is an expensive problem.
For example, if a project required twenty escorts to monitor a hundred workers for a year, it could easily cost the airport approximately $1,000,000. And with variations in labor pool availability, such constraints to find qualified people to fill these roles remains a challenge. CVG’s innovative team decided to take a different approach and asked Volan Technology to help.
The Solution
Working closely with CVG’s operations team, in April 2023, just two Volan employees installed the VPS at a 500,000 square foot airline hangar construction site in under four hours. The VPS is a solar-powered, wireless network that uses secure locators and beacons to precisely monitor airport construction workers and vehicles; it alerts workers, escorts, and other airport officials if someone wanders too close to a restricted area.
Construction workers are required to wear a badge-size VPS locator on a lanyard whenever they enter the predetermined work area. Locators can also be easily installed on construction vehicles and equipment, like bulldozers and forklifts. Unlike civil GPS systems, VPS provides pinpoint accuracy in seconds. And, because VPS creates its own secure, independent network, there aren’t issues associated with latency, updates, and loss of network typically associated with using GPS for tasks like driving.
The Result
During the six-month deployment, VPS continually monitored the location of each locator, alerting workers, safety monitors, and operations agents if someone got too close to a restricted area or if someone stepped out of their predetermined work zone. During the test, VPS alerted the CVG operations team to incidents when construction workers were getting too close to a restricted area.
Benefits and ROI
The benefits of implementing VPS at CVG include:
- Increased span of control;
- Increased safety and security through continuous monitoring;
- An 80% reduction in escort labor costs, minimizing the number of personnel required;
- Increased asset utilization: airport operations can now instantly locate any asset anywhere on site, reducing idle time, maximizing asset utilization, and preventing loss of valuable equipment;
- Risk mitigation: significant estimated cost savings from preventing runway incursions and other safety incidents;
- Preservation of valuable historical data available for dispute resolution;
- Increased fiscal control: VPS data are an immutable record of labor hours expended by project, shift, day, etc. These data give airports the ability to identify operational inefficiencies, highlight new ways to reduce costs, and increase fiscal reporting;
- Energy savings: solar-powered network has zero energy cost;
- Tracking capabilities: airport operations can better manage ramp operations and ground handling assets assets while providing various contractor performance metrics; and
- Penalty avoidance: ensuring adherence to FAA’s safety management rules helps to prevent costly fines.
Key Features of VPS
- Quick deployment: as an independent wireless mesh network with zero dependency on IT infrastructure, VPS can be easily deployed in hours with zero impact on IT.
- Solar-powered, AI-driven, micro-location geofencing network.
- Precise location positioning of valuable assets – workers, vehicles, equipment – in secure areas.
- Geofencing technology to create and accurately monitor movement in restricted zones.
- Instant location alerts to airport security and operations of incursions, people and equipment in unsafe areas.
- Live Map to visualize real-time operations and analytics to identify patterns over time.
- Solar-powered, low power, on-premise wireless network with zero dependency on airport IT.
- Cloud-based, enterprise-level Software as a Service to make it easy and economical for airports to get started and scale up/down as needed.
- NSA-level encrypted data from start to finish: capture, transit, cloud storage.
- Rapid deployment and easy reconfiguration on large dynamic sites.
Conclusion
CVG’s integration of the Volan Positioning System is a prime example of how innovative technology can transform airport operations. The case study illustrates the system’s effectiveness in expanding control, ensuring regulatory compliance, and reducing operational costs, offering a valuable model for other airports to emulate. By adopting VPS, CVG has set a new benchmark in airport safety and efficiency management.
Thanks for reading our CVG airport case study, please download a PDF version by clicking the image to the right and to learn more about our solutions, fill out our contact form below.
