PLANE TALK MAKING IT WORK!
In this piece I will provide some practical tips to aid current and future directors of maintenance on dealing with government regulators. Quality assurance managers might also benefit, as many of them also deal with regulatory inspectors daily. Some of the points I make can also apply to others one deals with as well. After all, we are all human, and the core of making it happen is human communications and behaviors or, if you will, human factors. A word to the wise, you can use the techniques I spoke about in other articles called the three Cs; confront, correct and compliment. A further word to the wise: be careful using this tactic on your significant other, I do not want to be responsible for any potential poor outcomes!
REGULATORY INSPECTORS ROLE First of all, develop a good understanding of the inspector’s role. A place to start is on your government’s Web sites, which provide a lot of information for those willing to spend some time
doing some basic research. Start by reviewing the organizational structure of the government you’re dealing with. Follow the organization down to where you are. Larger countries have regionally-based divisions and local offices. Gain an understanding of which region you are in and the regulatory district office. Compare this to the federal political divisions, find out which district you are in and who is your legislative representative. This can become useful if you ever feel the need to use political representation in your work. Remember that most government air transport safety departments are technical operations, and most politicians avoid getting involved, for obvious reasons, but especially if safety is an issue. They also try to avoid inter-company safety or economic issues as they can soon be seen as being unfair to one or the other, and may lose votes, if in an elected democratic system. In less democratic systems it becomes more important to know who makes the decisions even in technical matters,
BY ROGER BEEBE
as generally that individual gets the final say. However, even in the major democratic countries I have rarely seen technical matters decided by politicians. They sometimes do get to choose between options but you can be assured all the options have been well studied by technical experts. This is something to be considered as you work with your regulators. For this discussion we will assume
you have a regulatory issue caused by an inspection, program validation or even an enforcement matter caused by someone in your organization that you wish to dispute.
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS Once you have seriously studied and discussed your issue among your staff and other industry people and you are convinced you have a reasonable chance of winning your case, you can decide your strategy. Always remember that the local inspectors also do such reviews and they try to make sure they are correct. As I have written before, the inspectors have access to more
weststaraviation.com PARTS 40
DOMmagazine.com | feb 2017
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