Systems design, review and advice
Our service system design, review and advice, is all about helping you improve.
Aviation is systematic; it has to be to produce consistently safe flights across seven continents. In 2014, we as an industry flew over 3.3 billion passengers on 38 million flights worldwide. We fly in all countries, using equipment and procedures and processes that are as common to a flight crew in Australia, as they are to a flight crew in Zambia. The industry has achieved this commonality through systematic and standardised methods of flying—and it works, nearly 100% of the time. We still have accidents, and in 2014, 641 people, out of 3.3 billion passengers died in civil aviation accidents. The deaths of those 641, are not taken in vain—far from it. Airlines and operators, aerodromes, MROs and training centres and the whole industry still consider the loss rate of 2014 to be high. Aviation is ultra-safe.
As an industry, we continuously improve. Look at ICAO’s no country left behind initiative; we see a systematic approach to improving civil aviation across the globe—well, ASSET TCU and CRU are part of this effort—this is how we improve safety, systematically.
Most systems are the same; a set of inter-related elements that work towards a common objective: inputs, processes and outcomes. What goes into the system, information or people, and how that is processed, determines the outcome. If the outcome is not what is expected, then there is a performance problem—somewhere in the organisation. But where? In aviation, all systems are related—changing one results in a change in another. A symptom of a performance problem in flight operations, high absenteeism, for example, may be caused by a fault in another system—poor working environment, or a deficiency in the training curriculum. What we often see is a correlation between operational systems and training systems. This correlation is why we take a systematic approach to identifying the cause of performance problems. We analyse both operational and training systems within your organisation, to determine the best solution to your performance problem—training or non-training.
Operational Systems
We specialise in two main operational areas: Flight Operations and Safety Management
Flight operations review
- Identify the performance problem. Analysing the symptoms of a performance problem can allow us to determine its importance: its magnitude, duration, frequency and factors that contribute to your overall risk profile. From here we can identify its cause.
- Identify the cause of the performance problem. Often, the deficiencies in a system are related to another system or sub-system. We use audit trail techniques and tracking tools to locate the problem’s source, which may manifest in different areas or departments.
- Develop a correction action plan. Corrective action is the purpose of the review—to fix the performance problem. Using standard operational planning tools and techniques, we draft a plan and work with you to implement it, and to monitor its performance.
Safety Management System (SMS) review
- Review your Safety Management System (SMS) and advise you on ways of improving it. Using the ICAO Safety Management Manual (SMM) as the base criteria, we evaluate your Safety Management System (SMS) in the context of your operational environment. No two systems are identical.
- Design a Safety Management System (SMS) for your operation, and if needed, provide ongoing support including periodic reviews and updates. We understand that no two systems are the same and that generic or off-the-shelf systems, are not always a viable solution for efficient and cost-effective operations.
- Develop a correction action plan. Corrective action is the purpose of the review—to improve your Safety Management System (SMS). Using ICAO SMS implementation tools as the base, we draft a plan and work with you to implement change, and to monitor its performance.
Training Systems
We specialise in two main areas of training review: Review of training effectiveness, and design of training programmes.
Training is good; training is necessary; training is expensive; however training does not necessarily have to be expensive to be good.
Mat Petrenko, CEO ASSET Aviation Institute
Review of training delivery
The future of training lies in its ability to produce a return on investment. Just as legacy carriers have been forced to change, to adapt to survive, so too will training programmes. Quite simply, if a training program fails to produce results, if it does not give the student the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes, in the shortest possible time, in the most cost effective way, the training has failed.
Darwin said ‘it’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.’ We need to ensure that the training we, deliver or send our students to is the most effective means of achieving our objectives. We must spend our training budget wisely, and effectively. This is how we evaluate a training program, and how we can protect your training budget:
- Evaluate the curriculum for its relevance to the task. If we are teaching people things they don’t need to know, we are wasting training resources.
- Measure the effectiveness of assessment, Is the assessment assessing the learning material, or the competence of the person to actually perform the task?
- Diagnose failures to meet criteria of validity. What went wrong, was it the curriculum, the activities, mastery tests or perhaps the learning material; where can improvements be made?
- Prepare an evaluation report with recommended revision to the curriculum. Let’s start documenting a plan of action to get the training back on track.
Design of training programmes
Our Institute creates training programs—it’s their forte. As an ICAO course development unit, the team at ASSET CDU design and develop Standard Training Packages (STP) for the world’s national aviation authorities. But we don’t just do it for ICAO, we do it for anyone. We design from scratch training programmes to address a particular need; to fix a performance problem or to teach a new skill. We use competency-based training methodologies and instructional design techniques to build our curriculums and learning materials. This is how:
- Preliminary study. We check to see if a training solution is, in fact, the right solution to a performance problem
- Job Analysis. We break down a job, its tasks and special requirements, so we can establish effective training objectives.
- Population. We identify the characteristics of the target population—how they learn and what methods of teaching would best suit them.
- The design of Curriculum. We consult with experts in the field and sequence objectives and tasks into a logical flow—a process called DACUM.
- Design modules. We select the most appropriate training techniques, media and mastery tests and group them into blocks.
- Production, testing and validation. We develop the learning material and test it. Then validate the course through trials with experimental groups before releasing it to the client.
How to book us?
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Contact ASSET Aviation to arrange your consultation
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We will talk you through the process
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Agree on a suitable date
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Our administration team will take care of the rest - quickly and efficiently
What do our clients say?
Prices
Our rate sheet depends on the country where we work, and the scope of the project.
But our approach to business is this: we listen to your needs and carefully determine how to provide a product to you that is useful and needed, and delivered on time and within budget. We won’t try to sell you stuff that you don’t need, but we will speak up if we think you do; we won’t talk about your business with others, and certainly won’t reproduce or publish any of your writing.
We’ll keep your files safe; we’ll respect your customs; we’ll pass savings onto you when we can, and charge a fair fee that is auditable and traceable to a published rate sheet. We believe that if we conduct business this way, we’ll do good in the industry, and also make some money so we can pay our people and our bills and keep a little aside for the future. Please call to discuss our professional fees.