Individual Reflection
Done by Mr. Wang Zhuojun
YOUR CONTRIBUTION
How have you contributed to the team to prepare and complete the project?
One area I contributed in is the airport access modes and parking facilities page. This page was filled with the different tables that I’ve created on Excel for the parking rates and other informations that I found on Changi Airport and KLIA website. This page has all the information that one would need and want to know when he/she visits either Changi Airport or KLIA.
Another area I have contributed in is the creation of PAR tables and calculations for manpower required. At first, I’ve used the PAR table that I've seen in the lecture video as I felt that it was a more detailed one as compared to the random PAR generator as it uses passenger arrival rate in percentage to calculate the estimated number of passenger arrival. However, upon knowing that we must only use the random generator even though it’s not as detailed as calculating based on percentages, I proceeded to change the PAR tables last minute to make it right.
Another area that I have contributed in to help us complete the project as a team is that I constantly remind my team members to close their Wix tab after they finish updating so that others can update it as well whenever they want to instead of the website being locked for any edits. This became more important when we were supposed to submit our project report as we were all busy uploading it and designing it the night before the deadline. If one of us had forgotten to close the tab, the others would not have been able to put their report on the website which would make it a late submission.
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TEAMWORK (POSITIVE)
What are the areas that you have observed which your team has done well during the project? What have you learned from these observations which you can apply in future?
One area I feel that our team has done well in is us overcoming the downsides of using wix.com to create our website. Shortly after we started working on our website, we realised that it is quite inconvenient to use Wix to create a website as it does not allow multiple people to edit the website at the same time. Or at least, none of us was able to find a way which allows 5 people to edit at once. However, at that point in time, we were still working on the easy parts of the website so we felt that the downside would not affect us too much which was why we did not change to google site. As we move on to the later part of the website, it became a huge problem as we were forced to take turns to work on the website even though we are meeting each other and working on it together which made the progress quite awkward as one of us would be working on the website while the other 4 would be stoning most of the time. This also means that it would take much longer time to complete the website which was what we did not plan for. At last, we were able to pull through the pain of using Wix but it was all worth it as the website turned out looking nicer than what we think google site can provide.
Through this, I have learnt that hard work pays off and it's not necessarily that the easier path would turn out to be good. In fact, harder paths would more likely pay off and the outcome is what we would be satisfied with.
Another area that we did well in is us giving it our 100% and being very productive when we start doing serious work. As the deadline inched closer, we realised we had to meet and discuss in order to complete the website in time for our cohort mates to give us feedback. While we were at others house, we were distracted for most of the time which is bad for the overall progress of our project. But, when the 5 of us finally decides to sit down and start doing serious work, we were very productive and could get lots of things down within a very short time frame. Even though we could not work on the website all at once, we worked on the formatting of the content on our own first while one of us is updating his content onto the website. This saves a lot of time considering that we are not allowed to edit all at once.
Through this, I have learnt that having peers who work hard is very important as seeing them do their work will unknowingly put lots of pressure on myself. However, this peer pressure is positive as seeing them concentrating on working on their content makes me feel like I shouldn’t start slacking and procrastinating while they are already busy with completing their work.
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TEAMWORK (TO BE IMPROVED)
What are the areas that you have observed which your team could have improved? What have you learned from these observations which you could take note of when you work in teams in future?
One area I feel that my team can improve on is to not get distracted by games or talks. This is because when we go to others house to work on our website, we tend to chit chat with each other a lot as we have not seen each other for a very long time. On top of that, we would also procrastinate and become too lazy to do work and we would often only start work after we have stayed at the house for a few hours. This factors hindered our overall progress of the project even though we were very productive when we actually started doing work.
Through this, I have learnt that we shouldn’t get distracted by games and talks before we finish our project. All this could be done after we finish the project but we chose to let these affect our progress and caused us to have to meet for a few extra days or even stay overnight in order to complete the project.
Another area that we as a team can improve on is time management. As all of us were guys and have been working on projects together for most of the projects thus far, we sort of found our unhealthy way of getting projects done. We often don’t start on our projects after the project details have been released. At the most, we would research for a while, find out where we should be looking into and we wouldn’t touch the project for the next few weeks until about one week before the deadline. That’s when we will all start panicking and start going to each others house to complete the project. Often at times, we would find ourselves in a position whereby we have to stay over and do till wee hours in the morning to complete as much as possible. Although this method of doing projects is tiring, physically and mentally draining for those few days, we somehow are still happy and satisfied with how we work with each other for projects.
Through this, I have learnt that if I want to live a healthier lifestyle and have more sleep even though its near project deadline, I should convince my group members to start on the project early so that we can evenly pace out what needs to be done and there would be no need to rush when the deadline is around the corner.
(408 words)
SELF LEARNING EVALUATION
What are the key areas about Airport Operations and Management that you have learnt from the project?
One of the things I’ve learnt from doing this project is that early check-in process is possible and available even if one is neither at the airport nor home. Early check-in process is available at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal where people alight from cruise ships and are able to check-in immediately from there in order for them to not miss their flight due to traffic jam while they travel from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Changi Airport. Also, KLIA and KLIA2 allows for early check-in process if the passengers chose to take the train from KL Sentral to the airport. The early check-in process will be done at the KL Sentral train station.
Another thing I’ve learnt from this project is Changi Airport having 24 hour Ground Transport Concierges to bring its customers from Changi airport to any destination they want. Before doing this project, I never knew that such service was available as I thought that having taxis is more than enough as nowadays, private hire and taxis are can be booked very easily and are commonly found on the roads. This makes me think that sustaining a service business that charges an expensive sum of money to bring travellers from Changi Airport to any destinations in Singapore would be very tough as the demand might be low due to the expensive price. On top of that, fuel price, driver’s salary and maintenance fee have to be taken into account. This leaves not much profit left to earn from the trip and it might be cheaper to take a premium taxi from Changi Airport to any destination the passengers want and usually, passengers who are queueing at the taxi stand would request for a standard taxi and does not want to get assigned to the premium ones. This means that demand for the premium taxi is already quite low which makes it even harder for a business like Ground Transport Concierge to operate and sustain and thus making me feel that such service to exists.
Also, through this project, I've learnt that Changi Airport is more accessible than KLIA and KLIA2. Even though there are 14 bus routes that can transport people from different parts of Peninsular Malaysia to the airport, it is definitely not enough as there are 11 states within Peninsular Malaysia and has a total area of approximately 132,000 square kilometres. Having only 14 bus routes that covers an area of approximately 132,000 square kilometres will definitely make it inconvenient for certain groups of people to take the bus transport. Also, train service to KLIA and KLIA2 is also not very accessible to the majority living in Peninsular Malaysia as the train service departs from and only from KL Sentral. This means that for those who do not reside in KL, it is pretty much impossible for them to take train transport to the airport. Which only leaves them with 4 other choices, bus which might not be accessible for them as well, self own automobile which they might not own one, taxis and lastly, private hires. This leaves them with very few varieties of transport modes to choose from and would thus have a bad impression of KLIA and KLIA2.
As compared to Changi Airport, there are 11 bus routes and several train routes that can transport people to the airport and furthermore, Singapore is only 721.6 square kilometres big in area. This is a major difference as compared to KLIA and KLIA2. I personally feel that this is one of the main reasons why Singapore is often one of the places foreigners would love to visit the most and why Changi Airport has been crowned as the World's Best Airport for the eighth year in a row by SKYTRAX. This is largely due to the fact that Singapore has a dense transport network system and all signages in Singapore are easily comprehendible as they are written in various languages which allows tourist that comes from all parts of the world to be able to understand the signages and the transport network system as well. This allows tourists to travel around in Singapore with ease and enhance their experience touring around Singapore as they would not have to result in asking strangers for directions when it comes to which bus they need to take in order to get to their destination.
In addition, I've also learnt that having a dense network connection that allows people to have access to the airport from anywhere they are at is extremely important as it leaves them with a good impression of the airport. This was summarised from the many blog posts that I have read through while researching for this project. Most of the time, people would judge whether an airport is good or bad by its different transportation mode or access mode. This is mainly because if it's troublesome or inconvenient for people to visit the airport be it for flights or leisure, they would feel that the airport is not that developed as compared to another airport that is very accessible to them.
Lastly, I've learnt about how to calculate PAR and why during certain time intervals, there are more passenger arrivals than other time intervals. By using PAR and plotting graphs, we would be able to see a trend in the graph or certain spikes and dips which can represent a large number of either business, economy or tour group travellers that has arrived for check-in. Besides, we can calculate the estimated number of staffs required based on the PAR numbers. If there is a spike near T-120, it often means that the particular flight has a large group of travellers who are travelling with tour groups. This is mainly because tour groups have to arrive early at the airport in the case of unforeseen circumstances like someone's late, someone has forgotten their passport or documents required for verifications like entry permit, etc. On the other hand, if there is a spike near T-60 and T-75, it often means that there is a large number of economy traveller who has arrived and they tend to arrive earlier than business travellers as they would need more time to navigate around the airport as they are not that familiar with the airport.
(1051 words)
PROJECT EVALUATION
How do you find the project? Is there anything you will like to feedback to improve the project?
I find the project to be an interesting one as we have the freedom to choose which airport we want to work on and we chose to work on KLIA mainly because Malaysia is the first country we visited together as a group. On top of that, researching on KLIA will also help us to better plan our future trips to other parts of Malaysia as that was what we had in mind too when we decided to research on KLIA. Also, this project would have been more fun to do if only CB was not put in place or if only the pandemic didn’t happen as we would then be allowed to visit Changi Airport to observe the numbers for PAR. Ultimately, this project has deepened my knowledge on the different types of access mode available at KLIA and KLIA2 which can be put to use when I visit Malaysia with my family or friends.
I feel that the project can be improved by having short tutorial videos of how to work around wix.com and various other platforms that can be used to create websites. This will help students to better navigate around the platforms and be able to add the particular designs and shapes that they would like to add. If not, the students will have to figure it out on their own which can be quite frustrating at times as sometimes to us, we feel that the thing we want to find should be able to be found easily but somehow we just can’t find it on the platform.
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