Yes Vulcan, very well said. The concept of "ownership" ran through many components of airworthiness in MoD(PE) as well. Uniquely, we were named in contracts. It was scrapped (in our case) by the RAF Chief Engineer in 1993, the culmination of a quite conscious 2 year rundown period. Part of his "initiative" was that a directive was issued in 1991 that, henceforth, every civilian engineer was to be treated as subordinate to any administrator. A young Supply Manager, 3 grades and many years my junior, was appointed as my Line Manager. She was horrified. But others took great delight in their newly acquired airworthiness delegation. This led directly to the most serious issue raised in the C130 ART report (issued 14.1.98 by Inspector of Flight Safety). An astonishing period in my career which I've never forgotten, and made a point of retaining all correspondence.