Just prior to the Sydney 2000 Olympics Sydney Airport underwent a major capital works expansion.

As part of this upgrade, CSE Technology was awarded a major contract for the supply, design, development, installation, commissioning and support of a new Airport Monitoring System (AMS). The new AMS replaced legacy system of DEC based workstations and display mimic panels.

The contract involved the supply of an extensive new SCADA system, additional PLC systems and integration capability with new and existing management systems. The system comprises dual redundant SCADA I/O servers with multiple view nodes running Intellution iFix on Windows NT 4.0 Servers and Workstations. GE Fanuc PLC equipment is used for connection to plant and equipment. All systems are networked on the Terminal's 155 Mb/s fibre optic ATM backbone and 100 Mb/s ethernet TCP/IP.

The AMS provides an integrated overview of all Building Services, Mechanical Services (HVAC), Electrical Substation monitoring, Power Monitoring, and Airfield Lighting and Controls for the entire International Terminal and runways. It also integrates a number of new and existing system status displays, giving operators an unprecedented overview of airport systems performance. At completion, each SCADA system processes 15,000 field values every second to provide status and alarming information.

A feature of the new system is connectivity of the AMS with other airport information systems using Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) implemented using IBM's MQSeries middleware solution. This will eventually provide a centralised message broker and messaging system between all airport subsystems, allowing them to interoperate in true 'e-business' style.

CSE's strong IT integration skills were used to create the MOM interface to the AMS to the airport's requirements. These skills were also used to create a number of applications interfacing to iFix to offload data processing that was more efficiently handled in a procedural language rather than in iFix, improving system maintainability and processing efficiency at the same time.

Oracle databases are used on each SCADA server to log alarms and allow airport staff to create and view reports using site standard Crystal Reports software. A Visual Basic front end was created to allow selection criteria to be specified for ad-hoc or pre-configured reports. CSE's extensive experience and Quality Management procedures were used to ensure that the project proceeded to schedule, guaranteeing that airport staff will had all the information they needed to manage the airport when the world arrived at our doorstep.

A picture of the main menu page of the SCADA system is shown below.

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