CRM help and advice please
 

Hi everyone, I am an armchair aviation enthusiast and, rather late in life, I am doing a BA (Hons). For my dissertation I have chosen to look at the principles of CRM and examine what can be learned and applied to critical incident training in my job within the UK prison service.
This seems to be a logical place to chat to the real experts and practitioners of CRM so if you have particular thoughts, advice, opinions, recommendations, quotes, (Sully's email address?) etc, I would love to hear from you. Anything would be helpful and greatly appreciated.

Please feel free to reply here (which might create an interesting discussion)

Thank you again and I hope to hear from you. Best wishes

John, CRM !! A potential minefield.
You may wish to start by defining CRM; this could either stop your dissertation immediately or lead to a Ph.D !
I suggest that you choose a specific field from which the principles can be developed; either the social or cognitive aspects. Your job might bias you towards the social aspects, but beware of biased arguments from local knowledge.
I would start with the cognitive issues. Even if ‘your’ CRM is going to involve team (social) activities the group consists of individuals, so understand them first. Better still, understand yourself – attitudes and behaviors.

In this respect, the principles of basic thought could be developed via situation awareness (understand the situation) and then decision making. These are processes which people on both sides of the line will use, but perhaps each with differing styles and objectives.
Then the classic teamwork aspects can be added to aid discussion of example situations, but again beware of specialist situational knowledge.
The applied discipline should no overshadow the principles; for CRM, these are consistent, cf aviation and medicine.

Not a well known reference and perhaps a little dated:- Crew Resource Management: An Introductory Handbook.

Also, crewresourcemanagement.net

A specific ‘British’ quote:- “CRM is like the inversion of the British understanding of a bidet; ‘everyone knows what its for, but no one knows what it is’.”

ALF5071H, thank you for your reply.. they are useful guidelines. I am finding the more I research, the deeper the subject becomes... almost the classic 'paralysis by analysis'.
The situational awareness and communication aspects are key for my paper I think.. and the cognitive/schema aspects in looking at what gets in the way of effective decision making

I have read (and seen on cockpit videos) where flightcrew have to let 'company' know what is going on as soon as possible (I am assuming) so it doesn't affect profitability and operations. I even observed this on one video where a FO said he was going off station to contact company when the aircraft was on short final. The Captain didn't look too happy but didn't prevent him doing it but, even as a non-pilot, I would have thought that was the time when situational awareness overrode all other considerations.

This kind of stuff parallels communication problems in my field of operation so getting valuable insights from you guys is truly appreciated.

You might also want to look in to 'shared situational awareness' and/or 'team situational awareness'. Endsley and others have looked in to how shared mental models (or lack there of) effect team performance. You might find similar application in your domain.

CRM in Various Venues.....
 

Yes, it can be done, find me here please:

Air Operator Certification, Compliance, Oversight, Audits,

Endsley and Situational Awareness
 

Thank you for the link... SA is definitely an important factor. Very useful

Chicken or egg ?
 

Ok... Naive questions ..... and I wish could ask him, but when Sully encountered his situation over New York, could anyone suggest
A. What element of CRM kicked in first and
B. Which, if any, proved the most crucial ?
C. Did CRM experience make a difference ?

Re your questions: IMHO, these are all intermixed within what I know as naturalistic decision making (recognition {situation} primed decision making).

The critical issue was that the overall situation was understood; not that there was just a loss of thrust, but normal ‘safe’ alternatives did not exist. Thus, the chosen course of action was a ‘knowledge’ based solution; the solution had to be devised.
This ability undoubtedly came from experience; not particularly CRM experience, but that of life, the world, aviation, etc. Its how an experienced pilot thinks and behaves which is important; plus a long career where what was experienced had been retained (memory), being familiar with gliding, awareness of time, and controlling surprise (experience/memory recall).

John, I sense that you wish to use the A320 Hudson accident as an example; I urge caution.
Whilst it is good to use positive (successful) events as examples, the few notable events in aviation are unique and possibly atypical in respect to the situation / context, even though the human behavior is excellent. The important aspects for future operations are how the behavior was generated, and can it be reproduced by other people; these aspects are rarely answered in unique example situations – “I just did what was natural”: realms of subconscious behavior?
There should be many examples from every day ‘successes’ where particular aspects of behavior can be identified and discussed.


Expert Decision-Making in Naturalistic Environments
http://dspace.dsto.defence.gov.au/ds...TO-GD-0429.pdf

Uncertainty, stakes, and Time in pilot decision making
Publications: Recognition / Metacognition Model

Taking stock of naturalistic decision making
http://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B..._2001_JBDM.pdf

Expert Performance
Expertise

Thinking Skills
School of Education at Johns Hopkins University-Components

http://proceedings.informingscience....4/050maqso.pdf

Time Critical Decision Making Models
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source...k3YQFg&cad=rja

No panacea
 

That is such useful advice. It is very easy for me to get hooked into exploring CRM as the panacea which became my starting point for understanding the Hudson incident. Experience and 'airmanship' .. in other words the core skills which are key and can so easily be overlooked in analysis.
In the prison system we had something similar called 'jailcraft' which was replaced with 'meeting targets'. That is to say, the cost of honing the basics was deemed too expensive relying instead on watered down basic training for new recruits and relying on them remembering this in the months and years ahead with no refreshers and assuming they have life skills, team working and awareness skills as well as a modicum of common sense. Or maybe I'm becoming cynical in my old age

crm thesis.
 

Why dont you apply to one of your local airlines and see if they will let you sit in on a crm initial course. That should give you a good understanding of the principals of CRM as applied to the the aviation industry in the UK.
I know that Jet2 holds their crm courses in the Britannia hotel in Leeds which is not too far from you in York. A letter to the head of CRM would be the way to go, I suggest.

Thanks for the advice re Jet2.com. I had already contacted them earlier in the year but with no response sadly. You're right, Leeds Bradford is only 40minutes drive from here. I have contacted them again via another department so will see what turns up. Cheers

and I wish could ask him, but when Sully encountered his situation over New York

An interesting link in the AF thread takes one to some of the post mishap investigation interviews with the crew .. I read them this morning and found them utterly fascinating. You might pick up a fair bit about crew interaction from them ...

.. not so much about CRM but certainly about the advantages of having shed loads of flight experience in the cockpit when it all turns to custard .. I was amazed to find out that the F/O, previously a captain who by all accounts did a fine job, was on his FIRST rotation in the Airbus .. previously having flown stick and rudder aeroplanes. The captain, on the other hand, had several thousand hours in the machine.

Glad I was never called on to face up to such a task ..

Thank you everyone !!
 

Hello and thank you to everyone that has provided help over the last few months.. both on here and in private communications. I've been genuinely touched by the offers of support and advice.

I am pleased to report that my dissertation was well received and have managed to acheive a First in my Honours Degree.

Very best wishes to you all and, again, many many thanks

Congratulations on your achievement, John.
Though may not be of interest to you any more, you may like to read about CRM in single cockpit too :-)

Thank you very much for that .. whilst still just an armchair aviation enthusiast, I have definitely developed a keen interest in CRM and will continue to gratefully follow all links.
Oh how I wish I could turn the clock back and have become a pilot.. I envy you guys !!