Advancing Safety in the Aviation Industry

Hello, and welcome to the Beyond MRO podcast brought to you by FEAM Aero. I'm your host Michelle Dawn Mooney. And today's episode, we will emphasize the critical importance of safety in aviation with a focus on the role of this safety department at FEAM. We want the audience to understand that safety is not just a part of aviation maintenance and operations, but a core value that should be ingrained in every aspect of the industry by highlighting the efforts of the safety department. We are aiming to inspire aviation professionals to continually strive for a safer and more secure industry. And we have two great guests to bring on for this conversation Allison McHugh is vice president of safety and quality for FEAM Aero. And Priyanka, Thaddaeus Connor who is Safety Manager for FEAM, Thank you both for being with me today. Thank you for having us. Looking forward to the conversation before we jump in, can I ask both of you to give a brief professional bio? If you can, Allison, starting with you. Allison McU, currently the vice president of safety and quality with theme arrow. Bruce background. I attended in Bernadler Medical University received by Masters in aviation safety and management. Started my career in safety. With the National Air Transportation Association, and the Air Charter Safety Foundation is a safety manager and regulatory compliance, manager. And then joined the theme team about two and a half years later as a safety coordinator. I have taken on a number of roles with theme from within quality assurance and safety, ranging from being a QA manager and the director quality, and now I'm the vice president of safety and quality with them. And Priyanka? I have a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from India. And I did an internship in the Safety Department of the Hindu. I are not excluded, in the helicopter division. This was back in two thousand ten. I came to the US and I studied at the Ambrieverton aeronautical University in Arizona. I did my aviation safety science postgraduate degree there. I interned with Southwest Airlines, in their safety and regulatory compliance division for a bit after that. And then I've been at Beam since twenty I started as a safety coordinator, and now I am a safety manager, and I oversee the environmental compliance part of it. Great. So clearly we know why you are both chosen for today's topic. So let's get right into things. How does theme aero prioritize safe in its operations and contribute to promoting safety in the aviation sector and then tell us why safety is so paramount in the aviation industry. So how FEMAim error prioritizes safety within our within our operations, at FEMA, we say that safety is a core value. And we intentionally, make that statement as business needs change, on a daily basis, right? And let's face it. Companies, for profit companies are in the business of making money. So, you know, safety first was not was intentionally not used as a promotional safety for us because really putting something first can change depending on who is in management, you know, who is pushing the ball. So we say safety is of core value, where if their business needs change, no matter what it is ingrained within our system, within our organization in every aspect, and it is always present. Right? It is always prioritized, always present. So within FEMA, we prioritize safety through compliance with our regulations. The aviation industry is heavily regulated and we must remain in strict compliance with regulations. We implemented a robust safety management system where, you know, safety is a data driven approach and it's a business like approach. And again, the emphasis is on integrating safety in every aspect of our business. Quality assurance programs are a part of how we integrate safety within our operation and prioritize it, ensuring we have the qualified personnel, you know, to do our maintenance SAS competent workforce training is heavily emphasized. We are always, evaluating our training needs and evolving with our training needs. As, you know, safety aspects are brought in safety, we see potential safety risk, reporting encouraging our employees to report any hazards that they see. So we are proactive in our approach of mitigating hazards before they turn into incidents or accidents And finally, we, you know, promoting a positive safety culture, where information is shared, there's transparency, and we provide feedback to our employees and we encourage our employees to give us feedback and and suggestions as to what they are seeing because they are the ones on the front line every day. So those are some of the areas, and set of of how we go about prioritizing safety within the company at VM. And I'll pick up for, why it is paramount to the aviation industry tree. So primarily because, there are a large number of lives that are affected when it comes to not having safety or having safety in the aviation in free. And that also leads to higher associated costs. So the loss of life is a very high cost. The loss of aircraft is a high cost aircraft repairs and damage, high cost, loss of cargo. They're all high cost, aspects of why we need safety in the aviation industry. And because this primary effect is really high. The secondary services that kind of, you know, lead into these primary services are also highly effect So the maintenance industry gets affected. Aircraft manufacturers, traffic control, ground support, all of them get affected, in in this in this chain, So because a large overall effect on society, especially because of the loss of life and, property is high, That's why safety is very paramount for, the aviation industry. And Allison, to your point, talking about how safety always needs to be present, maybe not talking about that phrase of safety first, but it really it always needs to be a core part of what you're doing. So for aviation enthusiasts, listening. Can you maybe shed some light on how safety protocols in aviation differ from those in other industries? And then why these unique measures are essential. Sure. No problem, Michelle. So safety protocols within the aviation industry differ a bit from other industries because of the complexity of our operation. And the high risk off, you know, the consequences that we face when errors occur or, you know, safety mistakes are made. So within the aviation industry, unlike other industries. One accident can lead to catastrophic loss of life, property damage, and so we have to, ensure that our safety protocols are stringent and we are highly regulated as well. So with that, following strict regulation and providing oversight, that ensures that our safety procedures or safety protocols are in place and we do not get complacent, right? Redundancy and reliability is another area where these safety protocols are unique, within the aviation industry and even maintenance there's a lot of redundancy and reliability built into the system. So even, you know, with flight controls, communication systems, critical components. Their redundancies built in because of the high risk, associated with flying passengers. Human factors is another, element that is focused on where safety protocols are integrated, how the human interfaces with the machine, you know, human arrow is eighty percent of, errors that occur within our industry. Accounts for eighty percent. So understanding human limitations and the potential errors that, come with that you know, it's critical to maintaining safety. And again, having a robust safety culture, where all employees from the top, from management down to our, to our employees, for our mechanics work in the aircraft, our safety culture is promoted and integrated where everybody is of the same mindset that he, how we came into work is how we want to leave work. So, you know, being, being a safety advocate safety champion that those are protocols that we put in within our industry that are unique to us. Clearly, we know why safety is so important, but Let's take a look at what that looks like within an MRO organization like FEMA Arrow, what are the key responsibilities of the safety department? So when it comes to our responsibilities with within, an MRO, like Allison said, we are responsible for championing safety. We are responsible for ensuring that there is a reduction in injuries, a reduction in in incidence and damages to both beam assets and customer assets. And we do that by actively identifying hazards, having an avenue for people to report their hazards, report the incidents and injuries that occur. We minimize those workplace hazards by a very robust safety, risk assessment system. We optimize the working environment by the information that we collect from the risks that we assess and we try to minimize. We promote safety through various ways. We have a newsletter that goes out every order. We have management, honing in on a quarterly performance review. We also have an annual performance review. We have safe training that every mechanic is mandatory supposed to take during their indoctrination when they get hired. It our response ability basically rests on ensuring that all personnel have a wholesome understanding and awareness of all theme safety policies and procedures and that they know that they should be properly followed when working on customer assets because if they're not, then it could be catastrophic. To add to that, the safety department, our role really is to be, facilitators of safety. Safety is really everyone's responsibility within the company. It don't it doesn't live within the safety department. We are there to Asperonka said, be the champions promoted. We are there as advisory personnel for our operation operations personnel on how to best, implement safety within their, day to day tasks. Collaboration with other departments is key, regulatory compliance and implementing policies and procedures as you know, our operation evolves. We have to assess the changes that are happening in the hazards that are there and see, okay, what do we need to implement to cut, to have a continuous, positive safety culture within our company? So just to add to Priyanka, those are some off the duties off the safety department. Talking about those implementations from your perspective. Wanna hear from both of you on this. How has the safety landscape evolved over the years? What key improvements have you witnessed happen? So the safety landscape has evolved, quite a bit when it has, when it comes to advancements in technology. An increased focus on, regulations, lessons learned from incidents and growing a positive safety culture. Across, you know, various industries. We have shifted, from a blame culture. Where, you know, if a mechanic doesn't make an arrow, for example, he's immediately blamed and then, you know, shamed and retrained to more of a system approach, your human factors, and the, you know, how how humans interact with machines within our systems, with our policies, with our procedures that is really looked on to see okay on a system level what can the what what could the company have done or what can we do to improve safety or improve the policies, the procedures, the methods that we're using in order to prevent errors from happening. And Priyanka can talk a little bit more about the human integration. Yeah. Yeah. So, page facts or human factors integrating into our MRO system is basic be making sure that everybody understands that you are susceptible to human error. Human error will come to you at some point of time. And so HVAC has the dirty dozen, twelve of the major, human errors, a few of which are like complacency, lack of awareness, fatigue, stress, etcetera. But what we try to do is put in a concerted effort to ensure that all our personnel are aware. Of their human shortcomings and provide them with proper training, understanding of those safety policies, and why we have them, why do we have the protocols that we do? Why do regulations exist and what are the regulations that exist and give them constant reminders of a safe way of working. Through our newsletters or through, reading signs, whatever it may be. What we what we try to do is train people in a way that they overcome what comes naturally to them to work more systematically with the system itself. And we encourage management, encouragement for management goes a long way in ensuring that people lower their susceptibility to human error. And increase how they work better in tune with the systems, that we have for them in place. Another aspect of the evolution of safety too is more of data driven approach, right, where we are analyzing the data that's coming in that we are, moving from a reactive approach to being more proactive with the goal to be predictive. So, you know, the landscape of safety and the evolution there is being more proactive using our data to channel our resources as to what we need to address, what we need to look at. What what is what is our data telling us? That we need to pay attention to. Therefore, we can start being more proactive than just reactive in our approach to safety. And there's so many levels that you're both talking about when it comes to safety. It is a team effort, of course. And, you know, once again, a lot of boxes to check So what is the significance of safety management systems SMS in aviation? And then how do they contribute to a proactive safety culture. So safety management system is built on having a structured top down approach. That's an organization wide approach, but it goes from the top of the company right down to an employee, like a basic employee. Where the accountable manager and upper management, they have an active role in ensuring that they provide us with sufficient resources and oversight as we've mentioned earlier, our safety is our core value. So management has to be actively involved in keeping, our personnel and assets safe. What they've also done as part of the SMS program is delegate part of that authority to the safety department. And so we ensure that there is adequate hazard identity vacation and mitigation of those hazards through the risk assessment process before those hazards blow up and become a full fledged incident or So we try to do our best to address issues in their infancy so they don't become something catastrophic. And that's what the safety management system essentially does and how it works. Yes. Thanks, Bianca. So it, and it also, goes a long way in terms of it encourages a constant review of our processes. It encourages a constant review of our data. And because the goal of safety management system is the integration of safety in everything that we do with, push on continuous improvement. So, you know, even if we've implemented programs with implemented procedures, where they're, they're working. They need to be continuously monitored because hazards can be integrated into the system at any time. So there is a need for continuous improvement, and that is what, the safety management system also pushes. To your point, let's talk about some results, some of those improvements. How has your organization successfully implemented and embraced SMS and what benefits have you observed? So SMS, although it is a mandatory requirement, globally for most airlines, most most air carriers. Within the US, it is not mandated for, maintenance operators to to implement. But with theme, or management, they wanted to be proactive in the implementation of SMS, at theme. So, we took the time, you know, we got the personnel upper management put in the resources needed to develop the system, develop, you know, the policies, the procedures, the goals, the objectives and the methods of how we were, we were going to integrate SMS in a within our company, and to have it as a sustainable system. So we went about by, you know, we basically hired safety professionals to come in, assess the assess the system, the operation, put together following the regulations, you know, FAA par-five regulations, IQ regulations, ensuring that we had the necessary safety policies, safety protocols in place, management buying we implemented our safety training, including our SMS specific training for all all our employees and upper management, training management personnel on how to identify risk and what risk levels they are able to accept from what they cannot accept encouraging our employees to raise a flag to say, you know, hey, I've observed something. This is a hazard that I see that I think we need to address before it turns into an accident or an incident, as well as, you know, encouraging them for recommendations and suggestions on improvements in our in in safety. So we at FEMA, although we've we have a fully functioning SMS validated by the FAA right now. It is a continuous improvement, system. You know, it it contributes to the long term assess and the growth of the organization. And it also gives our customers, that reassurance that we are taking safety seriously and we are prioritizing it within our company. So it does help with our business development aspect to say to future current customers and future customers that, you know, safety is a core value here at Steam. And, you know, we take it seriously that management has, is the buying, has the buying and is committed to, to safety within our organization. Can either of you share any real life case studies and or success stories related to safety initiatives at FEMA Arrow? Yeah. I have a good one. So, a couple of years ago, we had a consistent pattern of mechanics, coming forth with head injuries. And we really didn't know how to combat it because we couldn't give them construction level hard hats. It wasn't, feasible for them to use them and work inside these find spaces, especially inside the engines. So a mechanic, one of our employees at one of our stations came up to us and, gave us the idea of using bump caps. We'd never heard of it before, but we looked into it, and it seemed a very feasible and easy and cost defective method of reducing head injuries. So we began to provide bump caps to all our personnel with the strict recommendation that they use it especially in areas where they have overhead hazards or falling hazards. And, we recently had an incident where one of our mechanics sent in a testimonial saying that he averted serious head injury simply because he he wore a bump cap. And so that that is a real life case, study that I I can, you know, take off the top of my head But it also is indicative of how important employee engagement is because this was feedback and the suggestion that was given to us by one of our mechanics And, we we implemented it and it seems to be working. Head injuries are definitely reducing right now. So that that's that's a good example. I think he deserves employee of the month, and I'm just gonna add my two cents in here, but that that's pretty good going. So let's talk about the future. What are some emerging trends and technologies that can further enhance aviation safety? So some emerging technologies, that can enhance safety are, you know, we have artificial intelligence that, and machine learning, where we're able to process amount of data and identify patterns to be able to be predictive in our safety risk. And, you know, we can address those risks, before they turn into an event. We also have augmented reality, that that is emerging, virtual reality, which, we are able to use within our training, safety training providing realistic simulations, immersive experiences allowing personnel to practice safety procedures in a controlled environment. So, you know, these transfer on proactive risk management, real time data analysis and automation that, you know, touches on the human factors consideration, where our employees are able to, you know, be integrated within our system and learn and be trained in a more, real life environment even before going out and touching the aircraft So those are two, you know, main trends that I see emerging within the safety industry that I see as very quite beneficial and, you know, just continues to evolve. And, Allison, to that point, how do you envision the future of safety in the aviation industry as a whole and then at FEMA Arrow. Well, as a whole and and that theme, I see that, you know, we we will continue to have, innovation within safety. You know, innovation in our training, evolution off our regulatory landscape. We we see that now we have, you know, air mobility vehicles, for example, coming in and UAVs. We're, you know, the regulators has to play catch up now in terms of, you know, how do we regulate this new form of technology coming in, within our air transportation industry? Also, you know, looking at human machine collaboration, how our mechanics and our employees relate and interact with the machines. So with that with the trends coming in and how we see the future of safety, it will continue to build on big data and data driving safety for us to be proactive and predictive. A lot of territory we covered here today, but any closing thoughts from either of you as we get ready to wrap things up here? I'll close out by saying, you know, within the aviation industry safety safety is definitely paramount. And prioritizing safety is definitely key with any within any company. We we are a very complex organization and we want our employees to be able to come to work, feel safe, on our customers to have, confidence in our operation to know that, you know, we put safety within everything that we do, you know, it's core to our business. And it never, it's not moved. The benchmark is not moved to a lower benchmark at any time. It is always a priority for us. So, you know, with what we implement and the procedures that we put in place and or management's commitment to it. I would say that, you know, FEMA Arrow has done quite a bit. When it comes to improving safety and, continuously improving our safety procedures. And just look forward to what we are getting involved with and the future and for us to, you know, continue putting safety first, you know, My final thoughts is just I want everybody I've seen to know that safety is everyone's responsibility. It does not belong only to the safety department. It is each and everyone's response ability to make sure that you work in a fashion that is safe to keep yourself safe and that you go home safe and your family, and you also work in a way that your colleagues are kept safe. And, I'd also like to let everyone know that we do have avenues that we we value your feedback. We have avenues where you can give in your hazard reports. You can remain anonymous. We have, intellect as our incident reporting program. So I just like to encourage everybody listening from field listening to this podcast to use those avenues because we we value them and we do work on them and we want to make your workplace safer. Again, those those are my final thoughts. Allison McHugh, vice president of safety and quality for FEMA Arrow and for Bianca Thaddeus Connor Safety Manager for FEMA. I wanna thank both of you for your time. Great conversation and exciting to see where the future will be taking you no pun intended in flight, I guess as we're talking about aviation, but how important and crucial safety is and you were both able to bring such great conversation and insight into this conversation. So appreciate you being here today. I wanna thank all of you for tuning in and listening to Beyond MRO. It is a podcast brought to you by theme arrow. And of course, if you like this podcast, we would invite you to subscribe to hear future conversations like the one you heard today. And of course, you can always go to theme dot arrow for more information on theme. As well as the conversation and all the information you heard today. I'm your host Michelle Don Munie. Thanks again for joining us, and we hope to see you again soon.