The Southern California Safety Institute (SCSI) is now offering an open enrollment course in Aviation Maintenance (HFAM) to the civilian and military aviation maintenance workplaces. HFAM, often also referred to as  Maintenance Resource Management (MRM), seeks to reduce human error resulting in a safer and more efficient maintenance operation. Human factors, as the largest causal factor of accidents, must be targeted for major safety efforts if an improved safety record is to be achieved. The course design parallels the maintenance human factors course SCSI provides to FAA Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASIs) which the FAA has designated an “FAA-Accepted” training course.  Developed first for the United States Air Force under contract, this HFAM training course draws from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advisory Circular 120-72, and concepts in ICAO, EASA and JAA required programs.

Regardless of setting, maintenance error is commonly found to be one of the top three causes of aviation accidents:

Almost 12% of all accidents reporting a maintenance factor.

When failure or malfunction of aircraft equipment is part of an accident or incident, fully one-third of these malfunctions relate to a maintenance error. 

Whenever engine delays are encountered, maintenance error accounts for nearly 50% of the causes.

Maintenance operations are also affected by human input that shows up as weaknesses in organizational processes leading to lack of motivation, fatigue and stress, time pressure, misperception of hazards and inadequate skills.

THE HFAM SOLUTION

Many maintenance organizations try to change the human condition when they should instead be changing the conditions under which people work and treat errors as an expected and foreseeable part of maintenance work.  Attention to maintenance human factors can raise efficiency, effectiveness and safety in aviation environments. This translates to better expense control and long-term safety benefits.  The results can be impressive.  At one major airline, after only twelve months of MRM training, the following was reported:

Ground damage repair costs decreased by 68%

Maintenance related ground damage decreased by 34%

Occupational injury hours decreased by 27%

Occupational injury medical payout decreased by 12%

Contact Rick Anglemyer at (800) 545-3766 ext 103 or the SCSI Registrar at (800) 545-3766 ext 104 for course details and sign up.

"three members of ISASI were honored with promotion to Fellow: Lindsay Naylor, James Stewart, and Gary Morphew.  Since the program’s inception, 25 members have been recognized by ISASI as meriting this prestigious membership class and have been promoted to Fellow and inducted at the annual seminar....Fellow classification is a permanent member status. Whenever you see members wearing the distinctive Fellow lapel pin, know that their contributions to air safety and ISASI have been judged to merit this special peer recognition."

Gary is the Director of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Certificate program and courses at SCSI as well as the Director of the SCSI Crash Lab.  Gary is also the lead instructor in the well known SCSI Aircraft Accident Investigation course.  SCSI is delighted with the ISASI recognition of the talents and capabilities of Gary.

After a careful review SCSI has decided to replace the former Human and Organizational Factors in Safety Management Systems (HOFSMS) with a new Organizational Change Workshop. This course is more clearly and tightly focused on how to manage the organizational changes associated with SMS. It has become clear to SCSI that one of the real challenges in implementing SMS is that SMS is creating significant organizational changes at all levels. In many instances it is not the SMS guidance and requirements that create the challenges. Instead, the challenge is to understand how to make the organizational changes that need to be made so SMS guidance really gets followed and requirements really get done.

This workshop will target changes within your organization, regardless of size! Too often in today’s fast paced world there is an unrealistic search for the ‘magic bullet’, the secret to success that can transform an organization overnight. The reality is that such a ‘bullet’ does not exist; thus to assist safety managers, or any individual involved in the SMS implementation, SCSI has put together this OC Workshop as a practical, hands-on course, that will provide the answers and processes to overcome resistance to change and help facilitate the evolution of a safety culture.

In this case-study based workshop we will examine, discuss and debate how to evolve and lead change with attention to both the organizational factors and the human factors. One of the major challenges of ‘change’ is to get people at all levels to understand, accept and facilitate the implementation of the SMS processes. We will examine the components of an SMS, based on ICAO’s four pillars, to see which areas will create the organizational challenges and how to overcome those obstacles.

The Organizational Change Workshop will replace the HOFSMS course as part of the Safety Management System Certificate Program. Anyone who already has the HOFSMS course will still have the HOFSMS course count toward the Certificate Program but effectively immediately, the OC Workshop will replace the HOFSMS from this point forward.