Oman Air Aviation Safety, Revenue and Growth Management

Oman Air Aviation Safety, Revenue and Growth Management

Muscat International Airport in Seeb, Muscat is home to the Oman Air, which is the national airline of Oman. Domestic and International passenger services, along with regional air taxi and charter flights are being operated by Oman Air (Al-Kalbaniet al. 2016).

Objectives:

  • To abide by the international Aviation norms for being a safe airline
  • To become a value for money airlines and make its brand image stronger
  • Revenue generation and cost reduction
  • To make a 10-year future growth plan by continuing catering to the customers of Oman Air
  • To play a vital role in contributing to the economy for the welfare of Sultanate of Oman

Project Team and Their Roles

General Manager, Jassim Al Balushi 

With comprehensive experience in ’ In-flight Airline Services in the Middle East, Jassim is responsible for the catering and managing the logistics and operations teams of Oman Air. 

Catering Support Services, Senior Manager, David Fernandes

David had spent most of his career in managing Food & Beverages in airline and hotels, providing the overall support activities within the periphery of Oman Air, like stores, food service, laundry, safety, security, and Maintenance. 

Senior Manager for Quality Assurance, Tawhida Al Kindy 

Microbiologist and Unit Hygiene Officer, Tawhida had been Trained in the UK, and possess a vast experience at various levels, responsible for driving the ISO and HACCP programs and conducting Certificated Training Courses (CIEH).

Manager of Food Production, Walter Turner 

He is the one looking after the food, drinks and beverage production in the kitchens for cooking and baking of food. An expert chef and food manager served in the hospitality industry, his past expertise includes catering in production kitchens, inflight catering, signature restaurants, etc. 

Manager Operations, Ahmed Chinguiti 

He has enormous experience for serving for inflight airline services for the aviation companies in the Middle East and Europe. His responsibility includes the entire catering operations and logistics.

Project stages and key deliverables

The project management stage is divided into four basic stages: 

  1. Definition and Inception of the Project: In the aviation industry, the first step towards project management is to study the background and market of Airlines before barging in. In the case of Oman Air, Oman International Services (OIS) was established in the 1970s that was the initial stage of the formation of the company, formerly in 1972 it was a part of Gulf air, before starting its operations in 1977 at Seeb International airport, Muscat. After which Oman Aviation group was founded in 1993, with clear aims for the company, those aims are further broken into milestones for making those objectives scalable. These milestones are bounded with strict deadlines for making them worthwhile for the timely completion of the project (Amriand Marey-Pérez, 2020).
  2. Planning & Designing of the Project: After setting the goals, it’s time for Oman Air to plan and design their strategies for future sustainable business in the aviation industry. This phase is responsible for identifying all the possible risks associated with the Aviation industry, rules, stipulations and standards that need to be matched for the successful and unhindered growth in the industry (D’Costa, Bodolicaand Spraggon, 2020).
  3. Processing and Execution of the Project: After taking all the issues and risks into account Oman Air finally set it steps forward to expand its periphery beyond the Middles East and Gulf Countries, and approached various other potential markets such as India it's and neighboring countries. It finally got registered in the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in 1998 which cemented its position as a leading aviation company of Oman.
  4. Delivering the Project and Maintenance throughout its lifecycle: The final and iterative stage of project management is delivery and maintenance. Oman Air operates in 27 countries anchored at its base at Muscat and manages a network of 50 destinations and its corresponding air traffic. India being the most eminent operational area of Oman air among other 11 destinations (Halkjelsvik and Jørgensen, 2018).

These above phases form the entire path, for the project development, right from the beginning to the end of Oman Air that defines the 4D concept of project management phases well, ie Define, Design, Do and Deliver.

Project Plan for Oman Air

Project time management

The overall project management component which is analyzed within a timeline and developed accordingly for the timely completion of the Oman Air project can be collectively defined as the project time management.

Project time management is followed by activity sequencing, that defines the order or sequence of events or activities in which deliverables must be completed. It is a subset of project time management (Hereher, 2019).

Project Time Management can be done efficiently with the help of following tools and methods: 

Work breakdown structure: It is a key project deliverable that directs and breaks the project task into manageable sections for the team members. The work breakdown structure is a visual representation of the project scope which is broken down into manageable parts in an understandable format for the project team. Each level of the structure provides a comprehensive definition and detail of the scope and available resources. For instance, 50 units of work can be completed timely if a $500 budget is allocated to it (Jalagat et al. 2017).

Activity List: Defining activities is the process of recognizing and documenting specific actions and event triggers to be performed for producing the project deliverables, according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The document which lists all the pre-scheduled activities for executing a particular project by availing a detailed summary of the task to be performed for timely completion of each activity is collectively known as Activity List. The Activity list becomes long if the complexity of the project is high.

Network Diagrams: Usually, Depiction of a physical network like servers and firewalls are not useful for perceiving information in project time management, instead, more intrinsic network diagram is recommended, which can illustrate how tasks are connected to each another in a project for catering the managers efficiently. Network diagrams relay every task and dependency flexibly among the managers, which eventually help the project managers for identifying the estimate jobs, take decisions with adequate information to help them, which further help them to track and manage the project progress in an efficient manner. (Malik et al. 2018).Visual presentation of information enhances the comprehension of the tasks by simplifying the facts and figures thereby improving memory of the unattended tasks at hand, especially when there is a lot of data to deal with. Network diagrams are further divided into Arrow Diagram Method (ADM) and the Precedence Diagram Method (PDM) for applying them in specific projects (Narayanaswami, 2019).


Critical Path: Critical path is an innovative way of identifying the odds in a project that can potentially delay the process and hinder the progress of the project from its timely completion. It is the longest distance between the initiation and completion of a project, that takes all the tasks into account with the respective duration for completing each one, that helps in evaluating a clear idea of the project’s actual schedule.

Project Cost Management Plan

Cost management and budget planning is the most important part of project management without which a project cannot be initiated at all. Project cost management planning includes planning, budget estimation, exploring Stakeholders and financers, entry-level funding, regulating and managing funds, and specifying milestones for attaining to the cost parts of various aspects of the project to complete it within the deadline and the budget restrictions (Pellerin and Perrier, 2019).

The cost management serves for the entire lifecycle of the project, right from the beginning, planning stage until its completion. It is further classified into:

Resource Planning: Resource planning is one of the most important part of project planning. A resource can be anything from an important human resource, financer, important intel on market research or a location or property which lays the foundation of the project and the resource planning ensures that optimum use of resources for completion of the project's tasks in a timely fashion. Resource planning activities involve the use of materials, consumables and using people to perform and complete the work. Resource planning also includes using assets such as useful information inputs for executing a certain task. Generally, tools are used to perform specific tasks which require human intervention, although in a few cases, automated tools are used that require minimum or no human effort at all, as per the situation requires (Sanchez and Haas, 2018).

Cost Estimating: Cost estimation is another vital step in evaluating a project scope. The main idea of cost estimation is to evaluate the cost of applying the resources and furnish a scalable plan and associated price list of the resources required and identifying investment options for the project. 

After forming a scalable plan, the next step of cost estimation is to apply the techniques that turn technical and functional data about available assets and resources into simplified resource information and financial strength of the concern.

Cost Budgeting: After getting a clear idea about the cost estimation for a project, the next important step is to break the resources and expenses in terms of the budget that can be allotted to them. These subparts are then measured and assessed so that proper priority can be given to them for avoiding the critical path and risks associated with the project. Cost budgeting is required for controlling the cost associated with the project and complete it within the budget allocated to it. Budgets depend on the schedule and cash flow restrictions of a project.

Cost Control: Cost control is achieved with proper cost estimation and budgeting, it is involved with estimating fluctuations from the threshold of cost baseline and figuring out corrective measures to achieve minimum costs. Cost control applies procedures to regulate and review the expenses of the project and figure out whether those expenses have a satisfactory and positive impact on the course of the project. Cost control constantly records all changes to the cost baseline and gives a simultaneous estimation of the final cost forecasted (Sligo et al. 2107).

Project Risk Log/Risk Register

Risk is the most evident part of anything to everything we do. Without evaluating possible risks associated with a project it cannot be initiated. Risk Analysts either focuses on reducing the probability of the risk occurrence or plan mitigation actions to lighten the impact of the risks which cannot be avoided in any circumstances (Towfiqi, 2018).

The idea of maintaining a response log or risk register is aimed for constantly reviewing and monitoring the project progress against the risks that threaten the timely completion of the project. This helps the project team to make themselves aware of the potential risks and take precautionary or mitigating measures to deal with the risks. 

The Risk register should be maintained and reviewed at the end of each phase of the project management lifecycle. As risks occur mostly in all the phases and slow the entire project. Hence, control of risk is a mandatory task for the project management team which will delegate one person to apprehend the risks and forward it to the project manager. The project manager registers the risk in the project risk log and explores responses or actions that might help to mitigate the risk (Sanchez and Haas, 2018).

A proper response to risk might require experts advise for possible actions that are required in order to reduce the probability of the risk occurrence.

Project Risk Log/Risk Register visual depection

 

ID

Date raised

Risk description

Occurance

Impact

Severity

Owner

Mitigating action

Contingent action

Progress on actions

Status

1

15.05.2020

Brief of a potential risk

[High/
Medium/
ow]

[High/
Medium/Low]

[High/
Medium/Low. See Risk Matrix]

[Person managing the risk]

[Actions that needs be taken for reducing the chance of occurrence of the risk. Then
Choosing to accept, avoid or transfer it. e.g. precautions,  insurance etc]

[Measures to be taken to avoid the risk or actions to reduce the consequence on the project]

[Action taken and date. E.g. Update 13/12/2020 mitigation actions implemented]

[Open, Waiting, Closed]

 2

 

list ofassociated
Project Risks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 3

 

 list of associated Business Risks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4

 

Construction Risks list

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


RISK MATRIX

   

Probability of Occurrence

   

1

2

3

Impact                           

1

Low                         

Low                        

Medium                  

2

Low

Medium                  

High

3

Medium

High

High

 

References:

Al-Kalbani, M.S., Price, M.F., O’Higgins, T., Ahmed, M. and Abahussain, A., 2016. Integrated environmental assessment to explore water resources management in Al Jabal Al Akhdar, Sultanate of Oman. Regional environmental change16(5), pp.1345-1361.

Amri, T. and Marey-Pérez, M., 2020. Towards a sustainable construction industry: Delays and cost overrun causes in construction projects of Oman. Journal of Project Management5(2), pp.87-102.

D’Costa, D., Bodolica, V. and Spraggon, M., 2018. In the uncertain world of Qontrac International: navigating through family, growth and succession management challenges. Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies.

Halkjelsvik, T. and Jørgensen, M., 2018. Time Predictions: Understanding and Avoiding Unrealism in Project Planning and Everyday Life (Vol. 5). Springer.

Hereher, M.E., 2019. Estimation of monthly surface air temperatures from MODIS LST time series data: application to the deserts in the Sultanate of Oman. Environmental monitoring and assessment191(9), p.592.

Jalagat, R., Dalluay, V., Al-Zadjali, A.K. and Al-Abdullah, A., 2017. The impacts of job satisfaction on employee turnover: A case study of Oman Air in Sultanate of Oman. European Academic Research5, pp.331-374.

Malik, A.S., Al-Saadi, S., Al-Wahaibi, A., Al-Badi, A. and Al-Hinai, A., 2018. Energy saving potential in residential sector and its impact on power planning-a case study of the main interconnected system (MIS) of Oman.

Narayanaswami, S., 2017. Urban transportation: innovations in infrastructure planning and development. The International Journal of Logistics Management.

Pellerin, R. and Perrier, N., 2019. A review of methods, techniques and tools for project planning and control. International Journal of Production Research57(7), pp.2160-2178.

Sanchez, B. and Haas, C., 2018. Capital project planning for a circular economy. Construction Management and Economics36(6), pp.303-312.

Sligo, J., Gauld, R., Roberts, V. and Villa, L., 2017. A literature review for large-scale health information system project planning, implementation and evaluation. International journal of medical informatics97, pp.86-97.

Towfiqi, D.A.A., 2018. A model for airport strategic planning and master planning in the Arabian Gulf (Doctoral dissertation, Loughborough University)

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