Winner of the OR Society’s May Hicks Award 2023 for his dissertation project with London Gatwick to develop the world’s first method for isolating resilience measurement in complex ecosystems, alum Matt Tench is now Capacity Planning and Data Analyst at the airport.
Photo of a stationary plane on a runway

Commissioned by London Gatwick, Matt Tench (MA(Hons) Business with Decision Analytics 2023), undertook his undergraduate dissertation focussing on understanding what it means for an airport to be resilient.

London Gatwick is the 8th busiest airport in Europe (by annual passengers) and 2nd busiest in the UK.

The overall goal was to inform stakeholders about resilience, and therefore form a mutual understanding across all stakeholders of what ‘resilience’ meant and who needed to improve what was key.

To do this, he looked to answer two crucial questions:

  1. What resilience is an airport operator accountable for?
  2. How can resilience be accurately measured, given that a single large airport is an ecosystem of hundreds of different organisations?

Matt developed the world’s first method to isolate the specific resilience that an airport operator should be accountable for. This method involved him analysing historical flight data on a case-by-case basis and applying formal tests to classify each movement as either ‘resilient’ or not. By doing so, relevant subsets of operators requiring additional scrutiny were identified, leading to proposed targeted changes and investment for enhancing resilience.

The project built upon fundamental principles of Operations Management (OM) and Operational Research (OR), grounded in queuing theory, to devise effective, insightful resilience tests.

By answering the above two questions and providing a practical approach to assessing and improving operational resilience, Matt’s project made a significant impact on London Gatwick’s understanding and ability to address resilience challenges.

Furthermore, as what happens at one airport will impact every other airport that has connecting flights to it, Matt and the team have shared the ideas with key stakeholders with the ultimate aim of improving resilience across the worldwide aviation network.

Gavin Sillitto, Main Runway Optimisation Programme Lead at London Gatwick said: ‘The aviation industry’s focus on on-time performance, and identifying detailed root causes of delay as a starting point for improvement, leads to exceptionally high effort on data capture and validation.

‘Matt’s resilience tests and visualisation methods allow us to bypass the “blame game” and move straight to actionable insights about the parts of the operation we can impact. As such, London Gatwick have designed their new Aerodrome Continuous Improvement Cycle around this new capability.’

An award-winning project

In recognition of the impact of his dissertation, Matt was awarded the OR Society's 'May Hicks Award 2023'. Projects entered are OR projects carried out for an external client organisation rather than within the university. Dissertation advisor Maurizio Tomasella, Lecturer in Management Science at the Business School, said: ‘This is a fantastic achievement and one for which Matt should be immensely proud.

‘OR is, ultimately, an applied subject. Matt’s impact on a complex piece of infrastructure such as London Gatwick airport as well as his methodological contribution to OR as a subject are the ultimate proofs of what some of our best graduates achieve through a dissertation project, when they are courageous enough to navigate waters that are charted to a lesser extent.’

Matthew Tench Receives the Iain Isdale Hird Memorial Prize
Matt receiving the Iain Isdale Hird Memorial Prize from Tara Morrison, Deputy Director of Undergraduate programmes

Matt graduated in July 2023 with a first-class degree in Business with Decision Analytics. The Business School also recognised the outstanding work done by Matt, awarding him the Iain Isdale Hird Memorial Prize for the most distinguished dissertation submitted for a Business School degree in any business subject area.

Leading to a full-time role

Matt undertook a summer internship with London Gatwick, where he was able to share his findings with key stakeholders around the business.

This then led to a full-time role from September with Matt currently employed as Capacity Planning and Data Analyst. As Maurizio commented:

This is the ideal conclusion to the ideal dissertation project from a Business School student!

Reflecting on the past year, Matt said: ‘My dissertation project with London Gatwick really brought my education alive, challenging me to learn and pushing me to succeed. It was an honour to be recognised and featured by the OR Society. ‘The opportunity to implement the project during my internship and work within the airport was a really valuable experience that exposed me to a totally new set of challenges and ways of doing things. I enjoyed it so much that applying for the full-time role was an easy decision!

‘I’m now using my degree to the fullest across many different areas of the business. This journey has certainly helped propel my career and I couldn’t be more grateful to Maurizio, Gavin, the OR Society and all those I work with at London Gatwick.’