so, with an overhaul contract from XL Airways of Germany and a very helpful contract for 12 heavy C-checks from Aer Lingus. Dublin Aerospace also gained contracts for overhaul work from leasing companies GECAS, RBS Leasing, ILFC and CIT, and a major contract from easyJet for the overhaul of 95 sets of A319 landing gears over a six year period. Since then, however, clients from farther horizons have been joining the client base with a contract for B737 landing gear work from Ukraine International Airways and one from Air Seychelles for the overhaul and loan of 331-200 APUs fitted to its B767 fleet. More recently, Jet Time A/S of Denmark has contracted for the overhaul of the APUs fitted to its B737 fleet.
For many major MRO companies internationally this collection of contracts might be seen as everyday business, gained routinely, but such companies invariably have a long-established client base and a major airline to serve. The point about Dublin Aerospace is that it has been doing well from the start, with little or no assets save a few hangars and a skilled available workforce eager to please - and no contracts. It is still a small company, with no more than 150 staff and limited business activities, but there is an evident readiness to do well for customers while demonstrating quality workmanship. - Frank Burke again: “We work according to low-cost model concepts and we also operate Lean manufacturing techniques, which are paramount these days. We have invested two million Euros in 2011 in upgrading the landing gear facility and plating shop and we have a test cell now. We’ll also be investing in various other building work projects on the hangars. We do as well as we can for our customers, the Aer Lingus C-check work as an example; we delivered the final aircraft one week earlier than contracted.” Another innovation has been the creation of a comprehensive Technical Training School, a fairly major move for a fledgling MRO company but which is also seen as a guarantee for the future.
The Secret of Our Success Expanding on the Training School and the company’s business success to date, Dublin Aerospace chief executive officer Donal Rogers told Aviation Maintenance “A lot of the staff here are ex-SR Technics and they were certainly glad to see the creation of Dublin Aerospace. They also like the new set-up, and we have established an internal administration to allow them to talk to me directly if they want to. We
make decisions very quickly because things change so quickly in this business,” says Rogers. “At this stage we can get qualified employees as we wish, but we have a number of apprenticeships in being and we have just started a new trainee program, basically looking ahead. As we grow we will need more people, so looking four or five years ahead we’ve started the trainee program with one of the government agencies. Dublin Airport has a history where people have been trained very well and gone through the organization, so we have re-started that with a different type of program called a Traineeship. People will have the opportunity to advance and gain licences. Trainees will be paid and if they are on site they will get a payment; its really training them to be qualified.” “If we have any secrets for success,” Rogers continued, “I’d say No. 1 comes from the quality of the people in the organization. It’s not just the quality of their workmanship but also their attitude and frame of mind: Do they feel a part of the company? Do they feel that it is their company? They will go that extra mile by knowing that they will actually share in the rewards, the profits from the company’s success. That’s the key to it, which is why we’ve got a profit-sharing scheme, where we share a proportion of the profits with the employees. And then No. 2 is having a competitive labor structure, for Ireland’s labor rates, like a lot of European countries, got out of touch with reality. That brings it down to the quality of the product, and if your quality is poor you don’t get customers coming back. We charge what we consider a fair price for good quality and we don’t take on contracts we could lose money on. We’re not concerned with volume or market share but we need to make money to re-invest.”
For newly-born Dublin Aerospace an obvious problem was bringing in the first clients. Rogers explained, “The main challenge was and is getting new customers in for the first time. Once they come in and see the way they are treated, the quality of the work and the pricing we can get repeat business, but it remains true that you’re only as good as the last work that you do for a customer. As it happens, all of the customers that have been to us are providing repeat business, and we’re now servicing effectively most of the leasing companies, like ILFC, GECAS etc. End of lease work is difficult and our people have handled that really well. “Sales is a 24-hour, 365 days-a-year job looking for customers, and its everybody’s
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job to talk to customers - including mine. Frank Burke is the frontline sales man and then we have three business unit managers. We don’t employ any outside marketing company, that simply increases our costs. A major challenge in the start-up period was getting in front of the airlines, and also getting on the lists for proposals, and it took time to build up, but we’re quite successful at it now.”
More ‘O the Same With the hard, start-up days behind it and intentions to expand, Aviation Maintenance put it to Donal Rogers that there might be a change in character in the work and that further investment will be required? “We have been concentrating on the narrow- body, 737/320 sector and that is our plan for the moment and for the medium-term as well. There is no plan to go into the wide-body sector, the reason being that we have four bays and we can handle four aircraft, and our view is that we would rather have a spread of four aircraft rather than just one big, wide-body at a time as it reduces your risk overall. We have the capability for doing line maintenance when we need to but other wide-body work is not on the horizon at the moment. We’re already investing quite a lot right now. We’ve been upgrading the landing gear facility, which will cover the A320 and 737 families, and we’ve just invested a similar amount on processes and new tanks, the plating shop and a bigger NDT facility. Some of the hangars are quite old, so there is a major program of internal work on them too, to bring the facilities here up to higher standards than when we took them on and to make things better for improved working practices.” “We’ve expanded over 100 percent since our first year of operation,” Rogers continued, “and there has been a big increase in the number of aircraft going through the facility. This does require investment. When he began the company, Colin McCarthy and his investors put in 15 million Euros ($21 million) to cover the creation and the launch of the enterprise and to provide some working capital. In 2011 we invested six million Euros ($8.4 million) in various projects, and as we grow in the future more investment will be made. We have no problem with expansion, for there is a lot of space around Dublin Airport for extra hangars etc. We lost money in our first year, which was expected, but it was not a cash loss as a lot of money was spent on getting the business off the ground. But now we are profitable,” CEO Rogers concluded. AM
Mina Booth Marketing Manager
mina@em-ltd.com +44 (0) 208 870 6730
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