I consider the research that Rigga is undertaking is worthwhile and could help to fill a gap in the understanding of Human Factors errors in maintenance. There are many documented examples where the complexities of the "maintenance system" have contributed to occurrences, incidents and accidents that the subsequent investigation has placed into the HF pot. Distractions, shift hand overs, incomplete information in the maintenance manual etc. I believe that the HF initiatives over the past 10 or more years (training requirements, seminars, revised regulations etc) have played a valuable contribution in raising the awareness of engineers and enabled better defences to be put in place to protect us from the traps that are out there waiting for the unwary.
However there is no "silver bullet" to solve the HF issues in maintenance and we are only part way along the journey to change the culture to embed this protective mechanism into our daily way of working. It is not as simple as placing the blame on management as Mr Fixer alludes. When an engineer certifies a fix outside of approved data, certifies maintenance without carrying out the engine run specified in the AMM the decision to certify is 100% engineer. Flight crew are further down the line with their successful CRM programme, we should not be complacent on this subject and say "HF training" received, job done"
Rigger1 is trying to get better data on the very personal matter of why we make a "concious" decision to deviate (violate) and if he successful and his MSc paper contains a valuable insight into this then he will hopefully share the conclusions on pprune at some later date.
Last edited by happybiker; 11th Apr 2009 at 06:47.
Reason: Name correction