Slightly off topic however, the next time FEDSEC or anybody else is confronted by Alan Joyce, Chris Nassenstein, or Tony Lowry with the observation that Australian maintenance standards are not superior to those off shore, could they please refer to the following....
I have been including stories about the good things we do here in Maintenance Operations and highlighting our great People and Teams. This week I wanted to share with you something that really demonstrates the talent we have and that our vision is being realised. Our mission and vision hasn’t changed over the last four years and everything we do is aimed at us becoming a best in class maintenance organisation, where others look to us to define best practice. We have a history of defining best practice – our ETOPs procedure is something we developed and is now used by airlines around the world, and so is our NDT scribe mark process.
The team in Brisbane Base recently added to this list of engineering accolades, and again made our vision become reality. They got a call from Boeing engineering who asked whether they could bring a North American MRO into the facility to learn how they work. This came as a result of a world-wide modification that Boeing applied to the B737 Horizontal Stabiliser skin. The light weight structure of the stabiliser has seen many MROs damage the structure during the dismantling process – but not so in Brisbane. They have accomplished 28 skin replacements with little to no damage reported. This is true Service Quality in motion and a result of the skill of our people, aircraft day to day management, and Technical Support teams working so well together to complete such a complex task.
I am incredibly proud of the Brisbane Base folks. The effort they have made to improve their performance over the last 12 months is nothing short of amazing. They have increased their productivity, decreased their turn times, reduced their line slippage, have fewer injuries and fewer sick days per person. Their engagement is at an all-time high and the results are speaking for themselves. Two years ago we didn’t have Fiji airways asking us to repair their aircraft, we weren’t bidding on a multi-million dollar third party contract, and we didn’t have OEMs knocking on our door to see how we do things. We are becoming a competitive and attractive business in the eyes of our customers, and it is all thanks to the hard work and dedication of our talented BM team.
I also wanted to talk this week about the amount of emails you are having to sift through each day. It was something raised with me at a recent leadership program and it’s something I’m passionate about addressing. I’m told each day you receive - maintenance memos on all fleet types, quality bulletins, notification of local quality alerts, EQ notifications on training and qualifications as well as general corporate and engineering communication. I know you are frustrated with the time required to find the things that are actually relevant to the work you are doing, and can often delete the things you do need. I’ve asked Alex Parpaiola to help reduce this burden and do some filtering and categorisation of the volumes of information being set to your inbox. In the future I envision all you will receive from us is – mandatory read and signs that are relevant to you, required Quality Bulletins relevant to you, and communications from myself and your Leaders. I’m also told you sometimes miss my updates in the flood of other emails, and would like to access past updates to read when you have time. I’ve now set up library of my previous updates dating back to when we first started transforming the business in 2012.
Finally, I wanted to recognise two of our people in BNE Base Maintenance – Tai Johnsen and Rachel Dudok who were nominees at the recent Annual Metropolitan Region Awards for Queensland Training. Tai was one of three finalists for the apprentice of the year award, and Rachel won Vocational Student of the Year and now competes as a state finalist. Congratulations Tai and Rachel and thank you for showcasing what ‘Best in Class’ Qantas Engineering means to the rest of the industry.
Thanks for all you do.
Be Safe
Tony
It is a credit to the hard working people in Brisbane heavy maintenance (that also comprise within their ranks people that brought with them vast 737 experience from the now closed Melbourne heavy maintenance) that even the OEM is coming to see how we do things here.
Bean counters will never admit that quality never comes cheap though.