Any Unknown or Unlisted Aircraft Manufacturer
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 3
Communication Breakdown; Confusion; Human-Machine Interface; Troubleshooting
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic; General Maintenance Action
ATC Equipment / Nav Facility / Buildings; Procedure
At approximately XA:00 Local in the middle of a configuration change from West flow to East flow at ORD TSOC personal vacated there position and were unavailable to change the localizers around to the new configuration. At the time we had arrival aircraft in the new arrival descent area preparing to intercept the new runways as the remainder of the West flow aircraft were touching down. This is a very typical situation that maximizes efficiency during a configuration change. When I went over to ask the TSOC personnel to change the localizers there was no one at their position. We are not trained in Air Traffic on how to do this. Another Supervisor went over to the localizer change equipment and attempted to change the localizers. This was done successfully but late. We have no way of knowing if there were Maintenance Personnel working on any equipment at the airfield at the time and whether or not this could have been a safety issue by energizing the equipment they could be touching. After the switch the runway 10C Localizer indicated a slight malfunction. TSOC then came back to their post and said it was just a DME failure. The controller vectoring that runway was notified and the Tower was told to add the equipment outage to the ATIS. TSOC then; without notifying Air Traffic; switched the localizer from 10C back to 28C to try to fix the problem. At the time there was aircraft on runway 10C with traffic on the other 2 East flow runways as well. Clearly this is a huge safety concern.  Either Air Traffic should be trained on how to use the Localizer Equipment and be guaranteed that changing it will never endanger Maintenance Personnel at the airport or TSOC shouldn't leave their post without having it covered by another TSOC personnel.
C90 TRACON Controller states ATC personnel had to change ILS to a different runway configuration because Maintenance personnel could not be found to do so. After the change and a discrepancy was found; Maintenance changed the ILS back to original state to attempt to fix the problem while aircraft were inbound on the ILS.