Is their a lesson for us all - avoiding over regulation?
In these difficult times, a helpful opinion can give us hope, as we seek resolution of many of the problems associated with regulatory reform. In the Jan to Mar Edition, of Helicopters Australia, an article was published that needs to be shared with others rewriting manuals and new expositions.
The report has been quoted verbatim, with acknowledgment to the journalist.
Maybe we should invite Executive Director, Patrick Ky, EASA, to speak at our Rotortech 2016 Conference on the Sunshine Coast in May 2016!
Why is CASA not using the same sheet of EASA’s music?
Flight International, Edition 3-9 March 2015, page 29 has an interesting report by Regulation Reporter, David Learmonth. David’s article is titled:
‘EASA mends the rules with tighter focus on outcomes’
The executive director at Europe's safety agency has overseen a wholesale shift in mindset. If a regulator dismantles its rule making doctorate it is a sign things are changing, and at EASA and they are!
Executive director Patrick Ky took over the EASA top job in September 2013, and a year later he closed the rulemaking department. "If you have a rulemaking directorate," he explains, "the director is judged by how many rules he makes, or how many existing rules he 'improves'."
The result, he says, is ever-fatter rule books, the content of which nobody could possibly retain, and the complexity of which becomes "impossible to work with".
When he first arrived, Ky says, he gathered his troops and told them to reduce the existing rules down to the absolute essentials, so they could all see what was really necessary.
EASA retains its power to make rules, Ky confirms, but the way the need for rules is assessed, and the way that they are made and framed, is now different. The rulemaking process now starts with a risk assessment to determine whether a rule is needed at all, and if so what it needs to address. Only then is it framed.
Finally, the rate of technological progress is such that prescriptive rules involving equipment can rapidly become outdated, so the future, says Ky, is performance - based rulemaking (PBR), with prescriptive rules only where they are essential. Mostly the latter would define capabilities and responsibilities. PBR means that the required outcome of the rule is specified, and the means by which that outcome is achieved is not the main issue. This method has been foreshadowed for years by the approval of rulings on an "equivalent safety" basis, which allows flexibility in the means by which a safety objective could be achieved.
Rule makers still work at EASA, but within one of the four directorates: strategy and safety management, certification, flight standards, and resources and support.
"Rule makers now only work six months at HQ” Ky explains. "Then they are sent out on inspections so they can see what it's like to have to put EASA rules into practice."
But Ky, a noted simplifier, has actually created a new directorate: strategy and safety management, headed by Luc Tytgat, formerly the director of the pan-European Single Sky Directorate at Eurocontrol. Why?
Ky explains: "If we are to go to PBR, we have to establish what the risk is, and to prioritise our resources and action. Luc's task is to notice what is happening out there, to recognise risk and determine where action might be needed." There are areas crying out for attention, Ky says, and ground handling, where - in simple numbers - there are more safety incidents than in any other phase of an aircraft's operation, is one of them. And in general aviation, it has started down the long path of working with the sector towards replacing regulation that was effectively commercial-aviation-light with industry-specific guidelines.
Long-serving certification director Norbert Lohl was on 1 March replaced by Trevor Woods, who previously worked on flight standards. Lohl says it was tough in the early days, building a relationship with sceptical national aviation authorities. They were essential, because EASA was so under-resourced that it had to contract out a high proportion of new tasks to the national authorities. About 20 of the tasks still are contracted out.
Woods points out how much is happening on the operations side, especially in human factors and training. EASA is preparing to drive operators towards the application of safety management systems within training departments, and towards the principle of alternative training and qualification programmes, instead of prescriptive syllabus-based recurrent training, plus the application of competency-based training.
Aircraft manufacturers must now provide operational suitability data to prove their cockpit interfaces work. Airlines will be expected to follow the manufacturers' manuals on type rating training more closely. And work is being done to improve the effectiveness of simulators.
EASA is not blind to the fact that pilots frequently seem to be unable to cope with the unexpected, Woods emphasises, and it is looking for ways of dealing with this. (Our thanks to David for use of his excellent report).
AHIA