GUEST
OPINION COLUMN
BY DALE FORTON
DALE FORTON has worked in aviation for more than 32 years and as a licensed A&P Technician has been an active PAMA member for more than 26 of those years. For the past seven years he has served on the PAMA Board of Directors as vice chairman of the Board of Directors, Great Lakes Regional Director, Membership Committee Chairman, Governance Committee Chairman, and Strategic Planning Committee Chairman. Formerly a director of maintenance for 135,145, and 147 operations, he has also held positions as service manager, parts manager, technician, and director of product support. Dale has owned his own businesses as well.
I encountered which caused pressure on others and myself. I believe these, and many others, occur
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on a regular basis in our industry and need to be addressed in any type of fatigue regulation. The first is the stress you are under as a new A&P on the shop floor. You are assigned a job and another more experienced A&P to work with. In actuality their experience is not much more than yours, as they have been working with their license only about three to five years. You were trained in school to go to the
manuals and then proceed with the job. Your peer says “never mind that I have done this plenty of times, let me show you how it is done. Besides we have to get this done quickly.” All your training from school says WRONG! But the peer pressure and new job makes you say ok, this guy must know what he is doing. The next example comes from when you
are that technician assigned a newbie to work with. You have made it in the industry where you have even passed your IA exam. The first thing the newbie says is “shouldn’t we look at the manuals?” But you know you have done this job many times over your short career and exude confidence that you can show him how to do it. You have learned that you need to work fast to keep your productivity numbers up and rechecking the manual will only slow you down. Along with the fact you have to let the new guy do the job while you watch. The clock is ticking so you feel the pressure. You do not stop to think that maybe, just maybe, the procedure was revised by the manufacture and you should double check the manual. You know you should have. You have now moved to a supervisory position. Your shop floor is full of technicians
54 Aviation Maintenance |
avmain-mag.com | October / November 2011
s I was put under a time crunch for this article I remembered back to many different situations
that you are to keep productive all day. You have several aircraft that are in various states of repair. All of which have deadlines. You need to keep the aircraft operators updated as to the status of their maintenance and most of all the delivery time! It has been a good day so far. In the late afternoon your Chief Inspector comes to you with the bad news. As he was completing the logs on the aircraft you had assigned one of your good techs and the new guy. The inspector had found a new
procedure was not completed in the repair. It was updated in the manual last week and a service letter was released to notify operators of this change. Now the job must be redone, as disassembly is required to complete the new procedure. Your good day just went bad. You are now in a scramble to get an aircraft out the door on time in an airworthy condition. Now you must communicate this to many
people. You must tell the technicians to get with the inspector and perform the job done correctly. Next you need to notify the operator his aircraft may not be release on time as expected. And you need to tell him why. Knowing this can be taken many ways depending on the operator. Some may say OK, stuff happens, glad you caught it. Others may say, I thought you knew what you were doing? Another response may be total outrage
because the aircraft will not be out on time so the blame is put entirely on your shoulders. Now you must go tell the director of maintenance to keep him in the loop as to what is going on with this issue. Mad operator, questionable technicians, lower productivity will all enter his mind. All of these and more may occur in your
environment. Do we recognize this pressure when we make decisions? Think about it. Be Safe, be Professional! AM
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