Originally Posted by
tdracer
As part of the transition to becoming an ODA, Boeing put in place a number of protections against "undo pressure" - something that didn't exist previously. This included training of management, and most importantly a clearly defined process for reporting incidents of undo pressure. At least in my experience (nearly 30 years, pretty much evenly split between the old DER system and the delegated AR system), I was
far better protected as an AR - literally all I had to do was mention that I felt management was approaching 'undo pressure' and they'd immediately back down. In fact, as an AR, I once had my chief engineer tell an engine company to back off when they started pressuring me to approve a flight test result that I was unhappy with.
OTOH, as a DER I was
clearly retaliated against when I made a finding of non-compliance (which resulted in an AD). Not only was I removed from the team working the issue (replaced by a DER who later had his delegation pulled by the FAA due to unethical behavior
), I went from retention 1 (hardest to layoff) to a retention 3 (easiest to layoff) and didn't get a raise for two years (at a time when raises went out every six months). When I mentioned this episode to my FAA mentor, I was told it wasn't their problem - it was an internal Boeing issue
ODA isn't perfect, but neither was the old system.
The real problem is the management chain. The delegated engineers from the company should have a completely different management chain to the project that they are the delegated certification engineer for. This removes them from the dual pressure of meeting performance targets _and_ the certification targets. Also any manager raising a complaint on a non-compliance finding cannot directly retaliate on 'their' reporting certification engineer, but has to go to another manager in another chain of command to say what their problem is often requiring raising the issue up the project team management chain then across to the certification management and down again. This is normally enough to prevent retaliation or undue pressure to meet performance rather than quality targets.
In most organizations the Quality Assurance system has a completely separate management chain and this can often go up to board level to ensure QA is not put under delivery timescales pressures.