For more than 35 years, IFATCA has been drawing attention to the human in the ATM system. With the ATCO not being a line worker, but the highly skilled centre of the system, this apprehension is fully justified. It is still common that the human factor is overlooked and specialists are called in too late when implementing new systems and when introducing challenging working methods. With the ATC world being on the eve of new technological breakthroughs, it is more important than ever to realize that controllers have to be able to mentally keep up with this, and deliver at least the same quality in safety and efficiency.