Applying Lessons from Safety-II Proof of Concept in Line Operational Safety Audit to Aviation Maintenance

Abstract

Maintenance safety culture is a topic that continues to arise. There is much information in many different literature sources that discusses measuring, analyzing, and scrutinizing data to determine if a safety culture exists in an organization and how to improve it. Currently, aviation maintenance personnel are surveyed for their opinions on how safe their culture is. However, this may not be an adequate reflection of the safety culture or help maintenance personnel conduct their jobs. Typically, they are operating in an environment that has a central determination of what safety culture is. Other programs in other fields have attempted a decentralization of control to guide employees to adapt to variation in the environment and safely achieve their job requirements. A proof of concept is being tried in the commercial airline industry with university support. The results could be expanded beyond the flight deck and into aviation maintenance with further research into how Safety-II has been successfully applied to other industries.