" The elephant in the room is that ‘effectively’ maintenance engineer’s hours are uncontrolled. The reason is cost, EASA don’t have the balls to grasp the nettle of regulating engineer duty hours/fatigue " .
The issue of engineers working hours / fatigue is not entirely due to the points you raise, albeit I totally agree they have a distinct relevance.
Ground engineers are their own worst enemy, and always have been, in respect of working hours given the lure of, and for some, essential, overtime payments. I met many who would do as much as they could irrespective of the hours involved.
This also suits management as it's clearly considerably more cost effective to pay for overtime when required, rather than employ more engineers on a full time basis.
The issue of the walk round however is one that should be of greater concern.
We have all seen, and please, don't say it never happened, the fabled "aircrew walk round" as in " x wings / x wheels / x engines....all there, done" at some point. That's not a criticism by the way.
Ground engineers can be just as fallible at times.
Interesting though the read the comments on here as to whom the task is delegated to and, from a different era, the role of the F/E.
Certainly, from personal experience, with Qantas / SAA it was invariably the F/E who would also insist on seeing the evidence of a water drain check for example, and certainly, on one "well known Middle East airline", the F/E always did the walk round along with a G/E, such as myself.
That's not a wallow in nostalgia, but frankly, the more trained eyes that do an external inspection, the better.