Training Support for the FAA's NAS Infrastructure Management System (NIMS)
The National Airspace System (NAS) Infrastructure Management System (NIMS) program provides the next generation of tools, services, and operational capabilities that support the management, operation, and maintenance of the Federal Aviation Administration's NAS infrastructure.
What is the Strategy for Implementing NIMS?
The overall strategy for implementing NIMS is to use commercial off the shelf (COTS) technology to ensure future growth and enhancements in an open architecture system for the NAS system and service related event tracking, management, and reporting. This provides the benefit of using commercially developed products, reducing risks, and the cycle time to deployment.
What is the NAS Infrastructure Approach?
The approach to NAS infrastructure operations in the NIMS environment is a three-tiered hierarchy, consisting of a National Operations Control Center (NOCC), three Operations Control Centers (OCC), approximately 30 Service Operations Centers (SOC), and approximately 380 Systems Support Centers (SSC) with over 6,000 Work Centers (WC). NIMS primary operational function for NAS infrastructure operations will be to support and coordinate maintenance activities.
How is GENCO SYSTEMS Involved in NIMS?
The first of the NIMS products to be fielded is Event Logging, developed from Peregrine ServiceCenter software, a commercially available software (CAS) product suite. Various
ServiceCenter modules implement the functions currently provided by the Event Manager, Simplified Automated Loggin (SAL), and the Maintenance Management System (MMS).
GENCO SYSTEMS, Inc. is providing a Senior Instructional Designer to support the NIMS product team to plan and execute the national user and systems administrator training. Specifically, GENCO SYSTEMS is providing support to the development of a training development plan, schedule, and course design guide. These documents form the basis of developing training materials to support national NIMS courses managed and administered by the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
The GENCO Instructional Designer will ensure that the student materials using commercial software and hardware systems describe a very specific and technical FAA function.
What Are the Course Materials?
The NIMS Event Logging user courses will teach Airway Facilities (AF) System Specialists how to use the NIMS system to make log entries and generate NIMS reports. The course materials are:
- Printed student manuals for theory of operations and descriptions of procedures.
- Printed lab manuals for performing procedures.
- Computer-based Instruction (CBI) authored applications for end-of-lesson tests and the course final examination.
The training materials will support a hybrid course; the student manual and lab manual are similar to those used in a correspondence course, while the end-of-lesson tests and course final examination are taken on the CBI platform. Students read a lesson in the student manual to learn the theory of operations and how to perform specific procedures. They use the event logging application on their workstation to access a training database to practice specific procedures described in their lab manual. Then, they logon the CBI platform to take an end-of-lesson test.
How is GENCO involved Additionally in the Training?
The NIMS System Administrator course will teach specialists to manage the NIMS environment and hardware and software components. The NIMS System Administrator course will consist of a combination of commercially available server and database management courses blended into a national custom FAA course. GENCO SYSTEMS will develop the training plan, student materials, and teach the course to the FAA System Administrators.
