Aircraft Maintenance Technology - 44

FROM THE FAA

IT TAKES TEAMWORK
TO IDENTIFY SAFETY CHALLENGES
By Dr. Bill Johnson
HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT THE DUTCH PILOT,
British air traffic controller, Austrian aircraft designer, Welsh
procedures writer and American regulator in a room? Well, it
is neither a joke nor a funny story. It is a working group of the
European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The team above
is part of the EASA Human Factors (HF) Collaborative Analysis
Group (CAG). The work, completed in June, is exemplary of the
continuing effort of industry-government to cooperate on safety
management. Another version of this story is reported in the
2019 3rd Quarter FAA Maintenance Human Factors Newsletter.
The EASA HFCAG is one of many sources of information to
define the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS). The EASA
website for the EPAS emphasizes that a key goal of the Safety
Management plan is to manage risk. That includes identifying
and prioritizing hazards and establishing mitigation plans.
For the current EPAS planning period, the Human Factors CAG
prioritized four areas on which to provide specific assessment
and guidance (shown below). Each of these target areas had a
small group dedicated to assessing the risks and recommending
potential mitigation solutions.
Target Areas for Assessment and Advice:
1. Design and Use of Procedures
2.Organizational and Individual Resilience
3.Senior Management competence and commitment
4.Training effectiveness and competence
The remainder of this article describes the recommendation
from Target Area 1, the Design and Use of Procedures. Now, we
return to the first sentence of this article that seemed to be the
starting line of a joke. The multi-disciplinary team included a pilot,
air traffic controller, procedure writer, flight deck designer, and
a maintenance regulator. Dr. Bill knows this story well because
he was the regulatory participant and quasi-lead of the group.
From the very start of deliberations, it became clear that the challenges related to design and use of procedures had no country,
cultural, or occupational dependence. We all had the same issues.
"....it became clear that the challenges related to design and use
of procedures had no country, cultural, or occupational dependence. We all had the same issues."
At the start of deliberations, the group identified 12 challenges
with draft solution paths. Our first written draft and briefing to
the entire HFCAG, it was clear that it was necessary to delimit the

44 OCTOBER 2019

number of challenges. Upon deliberation, we narrowed and prioritized the recommendations to four categories as shown below.
Safety Challenges Related to Design and Use of Procedures:
1. Unclear, Incomplete, etc. Procedures/Instructions
2.Inadequate Safety Culture and Root Cause Analysis Regarding
Procedures
3.Situations where there is no specific procedures for the
situation
4.Not Applying Proven Technology to Deliver Procedures
For each of the safety challenges, the group characterized
challenge to include: descriptions, example manifestations of a
the challenge, research approaches, and practical examples and
references likely to address the challenges. For each challenge,
we offered action-oriented solution paths for EASA action. The
group classified all recommendations into one or more categories,
including rule-making, safety promotion, or research.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Challenge 1: Review and Recommend Methods of Design
and Management of Procedures
The committee recommended that EASA commissions a working
group to develop generic, multi-domain guidance on the process
of design, validation, implementation, and maintenance of effective procedures for publication as safety promotion material.
Although cavalier, someone commented that, "If Ikea can create
usable assembly instructions for furniture assembly, perhaps our
industry could improve procedural guidance."

Challenge 2: Address Safety Culture and Root Cause
Analysis related to Design and Use of Procedures
The committee recommended that EASA place the topic of use
of procedures high on the priority list for continuing applied
research. Procedural noncompliance is a leading threat to safety,
thus it should be an applied research priority. Workers know that
R&D should examine the organizational and cultural issues that
impact procedural compliance. FAA embarked on this kind of
work with the followprocedures.com training, during 2017-19,
as reported in AMT, Nov-Dec 2018. That training promotes the
importance of a safety culture where everyone associated with
the maintenance organization takes personal responsibility for
following all procedures, all of the time.

AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

http://www.followprocedures.com

Aircraft Maintenance Technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aircraft Maintenance Technology