Employed by Air Navigation Service Providers, ATSEPs are mainly engineers, technicians, hardware and software specialists who are responsible for the specification, procurement, installation, integration, calibration, maintenance, safety assurance and monitoring of these systems. The equipment ranges from discrete specialist electronic systems to Commercial-Off-The-Shelf computer hardware running specialist software designed and maintained to provide a high critical safety-of-life service to aircraft. The systems provide Communication and Navigation services for aircraft, Surveillance (e.g. Radar), Flight Data Processing and supporting tools for Air Traffic Controllers.
The principal duties of the ATSEP are (as defined in ICAO Training manual doc 7192 E2):
Performing maintenance on CNS/ATM system/equipment which include:
- Calibrating flight and ground radio navigation aids.
- Certification of CNS/ATM system/equipment.
- Modification of operational CNS/ATM equipment.
- Corrective maintenance.
- Preventive maintenance.
- Performing installation of CNS/ATM system/equipment.
- Management, monitoring and control of operational CNS/ATM system/equipment.
- Developing, reviewing, and modifying CNS/ATM system/Equipment, and/or maintenance procedures and standards.
But also in frequency management, project development and Flight Inspection ATSEP have their role.
A major role for ATSEP is the System Monitoring and Control (SMC) of the CNS/ATM infrastructure and constituents