The importance of a Fuel Business Continuity Plan at the airport

Knowing how to predict and coordinate risks is probably the new frontier of modern society, increasingly characterized and measured by the ability to manage uncertainty. The Business Continuity Plan for aviation fuel, recently implemented at Rome Fiumicino Airport, is a concrete example.
Giovanni Muratore – Airside Operations

In a world increasingly characterized by uncertainty, knowing how to analyse and manage the risks and effects of any anomalies has become an important indicator of effectiveness and efficiency. Especially in large companies and complex organizations, the ability to manage business risk and to mitigate the negative factors that could influence the achievement of the set objectives is essential to protect against threats, losses and therefore for the creation of value for shareholders.

This issue was also addressed in the last 2021 meeting of the TOSC, the Technical, Operations & Safety Committee of ACI EUROPE, as part of a Resilience and Business Continuity Workshop. Marco Pellegrino – Head of Airside Operations & First Aid of the company Aeroporti di Roma, as well as chairman of the TOSC – illustrated the Fuel Business Continuity Plan to the participants. This plan was prepared ad hoc by ADR at the “Leonardo da Vinci” airport of Rome Fiumicino to guarantee standard of response, promptness of decisions and circularity of information in the face of any system anomalies. At Rome Fiumicino airport, on 6 November 2018, a theft of fuel from the pipelines close to the airport caused flames and an explosion, fortunately without victims. The redundancy of the pipes serving the airport and the autumn period, characterized by low air traffic, avoided more serious damages and there were no delays for air transport.

There have been several other similar, striking events:

Buncefield (UK), 11/12/2005: a failure in the automatic tank filling system causes the leakage of 250 thousand litres of oil and some fires and explosions. London Heathrow Airport must ration jet fuel to deal with this crisis.
Auckland (NZ), 14/09/2017: an excavator causes a loss of fuel in the refinery which supplies, among other things, the New Zealand airport. Due to the impossibility of refuelling the planes, thousands of passengers remain on the ground and dozens of flights are deleted.
Colonial Oil Pipeline, New Jersey (USA), 29/04/2021: a hacker attack suddenly reduces fuel stocks and distribution resumes only after paying for an online blackmail ($ 4.4 million).
These are just some examples of unforeseen and/or criminal events which have undermined the supply and availability of aviation fuel for airlines. As described in the events reported here, the decrease or absence of fuel can cause serious and lasting damage, including to image, and huge costs to all stakeholders in civil aviation and air transport. For this reason, in recent years, many airports have decided to take actions, preparing tight planning and an accurate risk analysis, capable of blocking or limiting as much as possible the critical issues in the event of an accident, theft, natural event, etc.

What are the countermeasures adopted by ADR to ensure Fuel Business Continuity and what was your risk analysis approach?

“Given that to plan business continuity well you need the trust and collaboration of all the stakeholders involved, first of all – explains Marco Pellegrino – we got around a table with the operators of the companies that take care of the various phases: from supply to the storage, distribution and supply of fuel. As a risk assessment strategy, we used the so-called Bow-tie method (named after the wearable bow tie). It is a structured and widespread method of risk analysis and management. The graphic grid in the shape of a bow tie allows you to easily view the map of the risks identified by the organization through a series of fundamental steps: analysis of the causes, identification of the consequences, identification of barriers (technical and organizational-managerial) aimed at preventing or mitigating the dangers, identification of the possible criticalities of the system in question. Once this is done, we move on to strategic planning, aimed at obtaining and guaranteeing performance.

With the “Bow-Tie” evaluation diagram, which assigns a score based on the possible frequency of an event – from unlikely, to remote, to occasional, to frequent – we have calculated the possible consequences, foreseeing the necessary actions to be implemented. In detail, we analysed with the operators the different components of the system that allows the refuelling of the aircrafts:

presence and availability of the docking platforms for oil vessels;
capacity and reliability of storage deposits;
availability and redundancy of pipelines for distribution from the depots to the dispensers present at the airport.

Based on the meteorological forecasts of the last decade, essential for understanding the movement at sea and on the platform, and by analysing the demand and average fuel consumption over the years, it was possible to identify a monthly and seasonal program with the operators, based on to which each company can determine the supply and distribution of fuel. With this planning it is therefore possible to foresee and adequately manage possible criticalities and anomalies, without to put at risk the necessary supply of fuel for Fiumicino aircrafts”.

Does your Business Continuity Plan also include the management of information flows and the creation of a crisis unit in case of need?

“The planning process – concludes Marco Pellegrino – is flanked by the structured flow of information exchange, so that, if due to an unexpected exogenous (power failure, adverse weather conditions, attempts to steal fuel, etc.) or endogenous (system failure, strikes, absence of personnel, etc.) should a system or supply be unavailable, a communication process is triggered which alerts, via an app on a smartphone, quickly and simultaneously, all the people involved at the technical table, made up of operators private and public authorities. This escalation foresees 3 levels, from the least urgent to the most urgent as is the case for the management of airport emergencies and ensures that the necessary decisions are taken quickly and following a preordained and not a random scheme”.