Whenever we develop activities to consolidate our services and leave them to the satisfaction of our customers; that is, production, we must add an ingredient that means constancy and efficiency in our services. We speak in this case of protection; that is, safety of the operations.
Customers require their aircraft in the shortest possible time, demand that all systems work as designed by the manufacturer and at the lowest reasonable price. To achieve this bunch of requirements, we need to plan, set objectives, design a system, execute what has been planned, verify that there are no deviations, intervene if necessary and recycle.
In all these activities, we must consider the requirements as established by RAP 145.125. That is, Approved Maintenance Organizations (AMOs) are not allowed to perform aircraft maintenance operations if they do not have availability of (i) Buildings and Facilities, (ii) Equipment and Tools, (iii) Data, and (iv) Certification Personnel.
And then how do we AMOs manage to meet all the requirements (commercial, technical and safety), be profitable and continue business without compromising on the investment itself and the brand?
AMOs must create an effective safety system whose alerts and defenses are used by all its members, because they are convinced to activate them or use them when appropriate, which aligns with Robert L. Sumwalt’s statement (Chairman of the NTSB): “Safety means anticipating things that can go wrong and then taking the proper measures to mitigate those risks, so that no one gets hurt.”
Moreover, the laborious part is one that results in employees convinced of the importance of their role in safety and in the quality of products. It is necessary to set examples, shape an organization with positive norms towards safety and quality, reward the effort and interest in excellence and avoid punishing those who report unsafe practices and / or conditions. It is obvious that this cannot be achieved in a short time. And it is obvious that there will be many battles to fight, planning them first. I want to finish this article with this statement from some front-line operational guy: “Safety Culture is a long process. It’s not something we created overnight. We are not just following the rules, we are not following the programs. It’s the norm to be safe. If somebody’s not doing something safe, it’s abnormal and somebody’s going to point it out.“
