Interview: Nick Woods, CIO, Manchester Airports Group
The IT chief of the UK’s biggest airport operator wants to give his organisation the world’s most intelligent airports – he explains the data-led approach that’s aiming to reach that destination
Like the pilots he helps to serve, Nick Woods always has one eye on the horizon. But as CIO for Manchester Airports Group (MAG), Woods is looking for data-led technologies that will help his business develop a competitive edge in operational activities and customer experiences.
“Our mission is to be the world’s most intelligent airports,” he says of the group, which is the largest UK airport operator and runs Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports.
“We’re heavily investing in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We’re investing in getting to know our customers better and predicting when aircraft are turning up and flying out.”
Woods says this focus on intelligence is a big break from the traditional approach found in most major airports. His team at MAG is focused on creating a much more proactive approach to data about flights, flows and facilities.
“Much of that work today relies on ground handlers telling an airport that an incoming plane has left its location late,” he says. “Our work is all about getting better at predicting flights, passenger flows, and staffing our facilities appropriately. We’re starting to deliver some fundamentally next-generation capabilities in our airports.”
Creating a new strategy
Woods joined MAG in 2016 after a broad IT leadership career. Having spent 12 years in telecoms dealing with project management and delivery, Woods moved to Accenture in 2011 and worked in consulting for five years. While he enjoyed the role, he had a young family at home and wanted to spend less time travelling around the globe.
Fortune was on Woods’ side. A close industry contact informed him the then CIO of MAG was looking for someone to lead the technology element underlying the construction of a new airport terminal in Manchester. Woods instantly saw the potential of the role.
“We’re heavily investing in data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We’re investing in getting to know our customers better and predicting when aircraft are turning up and flying out”
Nick Woods, Manchester Airports Group
“It was a £1bn programme,” he says. “I didn’t lead the entire build and construction of the terminal but it was a role where you’d lead anything related to technology in that new terminal. That position sounded interesting. The opportunity to come and shape the next-generation terminal was appealing and a great opportunity.”
Woods left Accenture and joined MAG as a programme director. He spent the first year ensuring the organisation reached a point where it could build the terminal and know what systems and services would be included from a technology perspective. As part of that process, Woods discovered that the group’s underlying technology strategy needed some work.
“There were end-of-life applications, networks, infrastructures and datacentres,” he says. “I went back to the executive team and said, ‘You’re building this billion-pound new terminal, but the technology foundations aren’t really fit for that next generation. You’ve got some risks here that you’re going to have to think about.’”
The executive team was impressed. They asked Woods to scope out a potential strategy as chief technology officer, a role he assumed in mid-2017. He spent the next year researching the opportunities to improve IT platforms and develop a future direction for transformation.
“That work was largely about putting the fires out and creating a solid foundation we could build on,” he says. “I took that strategy to the board and they said, ‘We like that, it’s a good idea. Why don’t you come and take the CIO role and deliver that strategy for us?’”
Enacting digital transformation
Once again, Woods jumped at the chance and was promoted to CIO in September 2018: “I never expected to join the company as programme director and become CIO just over two years later.” Fast-forward six years and Woods says his technology plan has been enacted.
“The whole strategy was to go from a utility service provider that is lagging the business – the business goes and buys stuff and tells technology to plug it in and make it work – to how do we, as an IT team, become a fundamental strategic partner for the enterprise, driving the business strategy and the future value of the organisation?”
Woods’ strategy involved replatforming existing applications and infrastructures to cloud environments. The transformation hasn’t involved a wholesale move to the cloud – MAG still runs some systems on-premise. He says the operational demands of managing planes, passengers and bags means it’s important to spread the risk. However, the general direction of travel during the group’s digital transformation has been to the cloud.
Similarly important decisions were made in terms of application development. Rather than relying solely on external service provision, Woods set up an internal software engineering capability. “We supersized what we were doing in the data space and delivered new data platforms running out of Amazon Web Services [AWS],” he says.
It’s been a successful transformation, but Woods recognises there were bumps along the way, including significant issues associated with the coronavirus pandemic – Covid-19 had a huge impact on the travel industry. However, a pause in operations gave Woods and his team more time than usual to consider how technology is implemented and used.
“When you’ve not got many passengers and planes, all of a sudden you get a bigger change window,” he says. “Normally I have between 11 o’clock [at night] and one o’clock in the morning to make complex changes before check-in opens again at two o’clock. Terminal Three at Manchester was closed for two years, so we could go in and do everything we needed in a nice clean environment.”
Bringing information together
Woods joined the executive team in 2022, having previously reported to the chief of staff. After introducing his technology strategy, Woods was asked to take on a group-wide transformation role, bringing together people, processes and technology to drive value. This work focuses on how the business operates in the post-pandemic age.
“If you accept that we took a lot of cost out and shrunk the business down as much as we possibly could during Covid, how do we then go and reimagine the airport in terms of how we proceed and how passengers turn up and flow through the airport?” he says.
“The programme also focuses on how aircraft turn up and fly out. We’ve looked at all the back-office elements – enterprise resource planning, people systems and asset management systems – you need, as a group of airports, to be able to facilitate all of that activity. And for the past two years, we’ve been concentrating on completing that work to create the world’s most intelligent airports.”
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Woods compares running a modern airport to managing a Formula One (F1) race. “At the start, you’ve got a clear plan – these aircraft are going to arrive at this time, they’re going to leave from these gates and take off at this time,” he says. “But as soon as you get to the first corner of the F1 race, everyone’s in a different position and you have to re-plan constantly and figure out what’s happening. That’s what happens in airports, too.”
He explains how airports have traditionally worked in a siloed manner – there’s little interaction between various parties, such as ground handlers, airlines, airports and immigration specialists, involved in operational activities. Senior managers have a good idea of how many passengers will be on flights, but finer details are often sketchy and insights are limited. Woods wants to drive change in the industry.
“The work we’re doing is bringing all the information on flights together,” he says. “We’re creating a single airport operational plan. Information goes into a single place that starts 360 days out but is constantly updated. Our work is all about creating better information.”
Taking a proactive approach
Woods paints a picture of how the insight his team is generating helps to boost operational performance and passenger experience at the group’s airports.
“We integrate information from aircraft in the skies with data about what’s happening on the ground,” he says. “That insight means I can forecast how many passengers I think will arrive. We’ve delivered a new system that has significantly improved our ability to predict how many passengers will turn up in a 15-minute time slice.”
The work we’re doing is bringing all the information on flights together. We’re creating a single airport operational plan. Information goes into a single place that starts 360 days out but is constantly updated. Our work is all about creating better information
Nick Woods, MAG
Woods’ team continues to add more data to bring further analytical depth. “I know which passengers have turned up because I’ve got real-time information,” he says. “I know that, for example, if we’ve only got 10% of the people flying to Malaga through security at any given time, I can start talking to the airline and say, ‘Do you want to go or not? Because, at the moment, you’re only going to be a third full versus what you’re expected to be.’”
Right now, Woods says his team is working on a project that aims to optimise the capacity of the departure lounge by using real-time data. The team has discovered customer satisfaction drops as the lounge begins to fill up. Having this insight means people across the airport can develop ways to boost customer experiences by dealing with passenger flows.
“We know how many people are through security for that individual flight and we can start thinking dynamically about playing around with call-to-gate times,” he says. “We can start to manage the occupancy of the departure lounge to keep it a pleasant environment for everyone. We can call people early when I know a flight is ready.”
Woods gives other examples, such as carefully allowing the queue to build up for a short period in security areas to create more space in the departure lounges. He says this data-led approach treats passengers as a continual flow of people. Managing occupancy levels means customers are happier – and there’s a potential benefit for MAG, too.
“I know as a consequence that we can make more revenue,” he says. “We’ve proven through the data that giving people a better experience also increases the propensity to spend. So, there’s a nice relationship. Delivering a much better experience creates a symbiotic benefit – people will be happier and more likely to spend money with us.”
