safetyfocus 04 issue - aviassist issue 4 2012...safetyfocus quarterly journal on african aviation...

SafetyFocusQuarterly Journal on African aviation safety

Issue

04Dec '12 - Jan '13

IN THIS ISSUE: Improve project management -boost safety Avoiding hazards staying unnoticed Limiting spatial disorientation Runway safety: avoiding a taxi-way take off?

AVIASSISTFOUNDATION

The safety magazine of the AviAssist Foundation

RECOGNISING SAFETY EXCELLENCE

SafetyFocus Magazine Issue 4 - 2012 1

2 From the board | Regional reality

3 Safety Calendar | Events in or relevant to the region

4 Foundation news | Closer to CASSOA

8 Strategic issues | Key to success How to improve safety with better project management

11 On record | Runway safety Recommendations to improve airport briefings

12 African Aviator Award | 2012 Interview with Daniel Wanjala - changing the spirit of professionalism

16 Human factors | Curbing the killer Tackling spatial disorientation in aviation

18 Maintenance matters | Finding a foothold Dealing with fatigue in aircraft maintenance - FRMS for maintenance

24 Safety culture | The need to notice Human factors in relation to not noticing hazards

Cover photo: African Aviator Award 2012 winner Daniel Wanjala at Entebbe Tower, Uganda © Avi-Assist Foundation

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CONTENTS

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SafetyFocus Magazine12

AFRICAN AVIATOR AWARD| 2012

CHANGING THE SPIRIT OF PROFESSIONALISM

Daniel Wanjala is an air navigation services inspector with the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority and winner of the 2012 African Aviator Award (AAA).

SafetyFocus spoke to Wanjala in the margin of his awardwinning trip to the runway safety seminar of the International Civil Aviation Organization and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation in Cape Town, South Africa late October. The Foundation is grateful to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, South Africa's ATNS and the Protea Hotel group for their assistance in realising the AAA.




‘It's all about the spirit you put into people'

SafetyFocus (SF) - How did you get into aviation?Originally, I was a high school teacher in the Ugandan capital Kampala. From there, I was recruited by the Uganda CAA as a trainee air traffic controller and then sent to Soroti School of Aviation for an Air traffic Control Induction Course. From there, I started working for the CAA in 2002 where I now work in the Directorate of Safety, Security and Economic Regulation as an Air Traffic Managent inspector. I still live in Kampala and go up and down to the CAA offices in Entebbe everyday on the staff transport bus that the CAA provides. Sometimes I am in the field inspecting or I am in the office preparing for audits, licensing and assist in drafting of policies. I normally work at the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority’s headquarters at Entebbe airport.

SF - One of the things that made you win the AAA-2012 were the safety workshops you organised. Who or what inspired you to organise these workshops?It was an idea that was ignited by an Air Traffic Services Safety Management Systems (ATS SMS) course and incident investiga-tion course I attended at the Singapore Aviation Academy under a fellowship from the government of Singapore. I noticed that all of us in that course didn’t really realise what SMS was about. Upon returning to Entebbe, I felt I had to bring my colleagues on board. So when I came home, I organised a first workshop under the umbrella of the Uganda Air Traffic Controllers' As-sociation UGATCA with support from CAA management. The short training was highly appreciated by my colleagues, all air traffic controllers. This first workshop consisted of only a half day based on the materials I had gathered in Singapore. I felt it would be a missed opportunity to sit on this valuable knowl-edge and not transfer it to my colleagues who didn’t have a chance to go to such a course abroad.

SF - Another achievement that was picked up by the jury was the cockpit familiarisation program that you revived in the Uganda CAA. What was your idea behind that?Originally at the CAA, controllers had to acquire a private pilots license but because of funds challenges, that program was stopped. However, over time, I realised that we all lacked an essential appreciation on what happens in the cockpit. New technologies are entering the cockpit impacting aircraft

performance as well as the pilot’s workload during different phases of flight. I felt the program that was in place at that time was not effective; it wouldn’t enable all of us to have the necessary flights before we retired. There were only 3 slots per year for a controller to do a cockpit familiarisation flight which included an overnight stay, usually abroad. With some 80 controllers in Uganda, it would take us some 25 years for all the controllers to have a fa-miliarisation flight . We changed this program into

a system with short flights up and down to for example Nairobi. This meant that there wasn’t a need for expensive overnight stays abroad but staff would usually come back the same day. This drastically reduced the costs involved.My interest in revamping the program also came about on the basis of a bit of personal frustration. I was involved in an incident at some point in time where I asked a Boeing 737 to orbit at five miles on final. The pilot wasn’t happy about it and consequently he came back to me on it. I went back home and thought about it and realised that maybe I didn’t fully

understand what was going on in the cockpit at that time. I felt I lacked a good appreciation of the cockpit work environment to enable me to set the right priorities, not only from an air traffic controllers view but from an overall ‘system’ view which also includes the pilots in the cockpit.

SF - Who inspires you in your work?It was my late mother who always told me to be able to speak out and do what is right. In that way she also laid the founda-tion for my communication skills. For professional inspiration, I look at the work of Albert Taylor from Ghana. Mr. Taylor is undoubtedly known as one of Africa’s pioneering air traffic controllers who has had a profound influ-ence on the aviation industry in Africa. He has put issues on the table that have moved the region forward since he started his career at the Ghana Civil Aviation Author-ity in 1982. Mr. Taylor believes in advance-ment of technology and upholding the highest professional standard. I first met Mr. Taylor at an IFATCA meeting in Uganda in 2004 and we have been meeting at various meetings since. He has shown me things can be done differently than what has been done –he inspires change. But I also found crucial support closer to home. My then Director of Air Navigation Services Eng.Kagoro was always positive and ad-vised me on the best ways of commnicating with management. And in my present position, my director of safety Mr. Muneza supports the cause for systemic safety investigations.

SF - When you think of the people that inspired you to do what made you win the award, what do you do to try and inspire people around you?

Well, I always try to pass on information I receive and try to show colleagues the other side of the coin – not to look only at a problem from one direction but look at it from the other direc-tion too. That has turned out not to be easy but it’s encouraging to see some people have now adopted that approach as well. As a result, some controllers now report incidents in an effort to enable the brotherhood of ATC to learn from them – some-times without even reporting these incidents to their manag-ers. That was when I was working with UGATCA but it still happens. It’s quite humbling to see they now also believe that we jointly come to better solutions that address why something has happened.

SF - Having worked in aviation since 2002, what do you think are going to be the big challenges in your profession in Uganda or the region?Staff retention is going to be a problem. Recruitment is high but similarly a lot of people don’t stay in the industry for long.

SafetyFocus Magazine



‘Many more things than we think can be done in house with expertise you have as an organisation.’

They come in as young air traffic control-lers, eager to learn, but after a while it starts to seem boring and then they move on to do something completely different. The (mental) pressure in the job is considered high, but in some ways it’s sometimes fairly monotonous. Quite a lot of them are really into computers and want challenges and want to be involved more in the decision making processes which is quite often not happening so they look around for more challenging jobs.

SF - So it’s not the case that most of them are leaving because they get a job in Dubai or another booming economy?No, it doesn’t seem so. They normally stay inside the country

SF – You mentioned earlier on that you did this SMS course and brought it back to Uganda by giving short courses on the subject in Uganda. Do you think you have been able to make a contribution to the maturing of the safety culture in Uganda?Well, I hope the actual courses themselves will have made a difference. When I re-alised the gaps, I looked at the regulations, training & technology – the three defences against latent errors causing an incident

or accident. Coming back from Singapore, I picked out everything I thought I could implement. One of the elements was the cockpit familiarisation flight program. That has led to a good step in moving forward the safety culture as that bit of training is truly invaluable. Then I also started to organise workshops in which we could share experiences over any incidents. And now, after crossing over to the Air Navigation Services inspectorate, I am also involved in incident investigations. I have tried to implement a pro-active

approach there by primarily looking for system failures rather than blaming indi-viduals. There is still some way to go but at least we are moving in the right direction and the subject is being discussed at many fora.

SF - Based on your work, do you see changes where people become more open to discuss things?Yes, I think people are opening up much more after we started work on changing the method of investigation from appointing blame to an individual to finding out why the system allowed something to happen. Because if an unsafe situation passes the substitution test [would another professional in the organisation have done the same? – editor], there is no point in getting rid of the professional in question as the same thing is bound to happen again.The number of reports has increased and people carefully open up, allowing us to learn about procedures that we might have to change instead of just getting rid of individual people. People are beginning to work towards the intention of investigation being a correction to the system, not to ap-portion blame. And so slowly, we get more reports coming in as the knowledge from

our short courses trickles down through the organisation.

When there is an incident, we nowadays try to interview the staff involved to try and find out the problems in the system. And those issues that come up that may require management attention, I take them back to the management – I don’t leave them with the controller. They should not tell the con-trollers “Please, stop doing this and do that”. There should be a whole chain of events, in-cluding for example adjusted management priorities or updated training to get rid of that latent failure. After the interview, the professional involved gets a copy of the report of the interview as part of the feedback cycle.

We had 2 cases involv-ing the use of opposite runways. At that time, there was no procedure in place on the use of opposite runways. After these incidents, the initial reaction was “the controller doesn’t know what he is doing”. But further investigation lead to the discov-ery that there was a culture in the system that led to everyone doing it, sometimes under pressure of pilots. After the investiga-tion, we put up guidance on when and how to use opposite runways. I just pray that SMS is implemented and the culture becomes rooted in the region. It’s not a simple thing, it needs a lot of tact, knowledge and patience not just money thrown at it.

SF – But I can also imagine that sounds very nice in theory but management may still be inclined to revert back to the disciplining of people. Is that something you’ve seen, where

Every day, thousands of professionals in Africa contribute to making commercial aviation the safest form of transportation. They think safety and act in ways that promote safety because they know the aviation industry depends on it, and because it is the right thing to do. However, aggregate data for the entire continent masks the gains from their professionalism and their role as safety champions. Each two years the AviAssist Foundation will single out an individual or a team that has made an outstanding contributions to risk reduction above and beyond normal responsibilities from among nominations by colleagues from the profession. For each edition, the AviAssist Foundation will select a particular aviation

profession as the focus for the award. The nominations are judged by a jury made up of independ-ent industry leaders. They judge independently for five main criteria:

1. Professionalism2. Leadership, inclusiveness & co-operation3. Safety Aptitude4. Lasting legacy of safety improvement5. Technical Expertise

and award the African aviator award. The awarding event will take place in front of a distinguished audience of industry leaders at a major aviation event in the African region.

African Aviator Award - AAA

From right to left - AAA-2012 winner Daniel Wanjala, CANSO interim DG Samantha Sharif, Wanjala's colleague Owomukama and AviAssist director Tom Kok at the ATNS organised African Aviator Award gala dinner



you had hoped they would have been a bit more careful with the information you gave to management?Well, it certainly is not an easy thing to achieve. It’s a process that comes over some time. I have been talking to man-agement a few times where they’ve seen the actual (system) problems rather than punishing the staff involved. They have reversed their decisions several times to reflect that maturing of the safety cul-ture which is hopeful. It is now becom-ing more common that the management seeks advice from the inspectorate before they action. Along the way, I involved the manager quality insurance because the two go hand in hand. Involving her made it a little easier to convince management when we tackle quality and the positive safety culture hand in hand.

SF –You have been working on introducing the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations to the regional safety oversight organisation for the East African Comminuty (CASSOA). Why did you feel that was important?I visited CASSOA once and was impressed by their involvement in regulations. But I felt the technical aspect of aerodrome control could be strengthened. And then I

thought of IFATCA with all its struc-tures and expertise among its members. So I thought that linking up IFATCA and CASSOA, can get CASSOA free technical advice as far as Air Traffic Control issues are concerned. There is no regular forum

yet to assist the East African Commu-nity to move forward on ATC issues. I introduced both organisations to each other only last year, the formal process of establishing a cooperative relationship is still ongoing.

SF –If you were asked to help define the focal areas of the AviAssist Foundation, are there any areas you feel we should be working on?One major challenge we are facing is get-ting a standard recruitment test for new candidate controllers. I looked at Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda but it seems we have no standard test for this purpose. That would be a crucial step in the region to improve safety, if we can move towards a high quality standard recruitment test.

Equally, I think we could use further support in implementing SMS. That will mean the safety oversight burden may reduce slightly while safety would improve. It is quite a challenge to move from the production of SMS manuals to the actual maturing of the positive safety culture. It’s difficult for people to know where to start from with SMS.

SF – What could the Foundation do to assist in that area?Given the fact that it is all about the culture you build, the spirit you put into people there are a few things that can be started on like mere the collection of data. That is quite often still a difficult thing. Incidents and accidents happen but still, data is not there really.

SF – Is that because people don’t know how to collect the data or people don’t want to report?People do report but it’s difficult to know what data to collect, how to collect it and how to interpret data. But also the training is quite often a problem. Training control-lers in human factors is something that is required in regulations throughout the region but it is not yet regular part of the training. This could happen in short courses of half a day or perhaps 2 days with big numbers of staff participating. This is a problem in the whole region. It sometimes feels that human factors is being seen as being the same as simulator training, in other words the interpretation sometimes is that simulator training cov-ers the human factors. But the knowledge is different. And if people go to know that and got better training on it, people will feel more involved and responsible in SMS issues.

SF – And would you think that is something that can be done in house or does that have to be a retreat, five days away and thou-sands of dollars of allowances?No, I think that can be easily done in-house. It can be done even with internal capacity, it just needs someone to drive it into that direction. It requires people to realise the impact such training could have on the operation. In the short course on SMS I gave on the basis of what I learned in Singapore, I trained about 55-60 con-trollers out of the total of some 80 control-lers in Uganda last year. That goes to show it doesn’t have to be complicated. Some of these people have left, some have retired but most of them are still active. But quite often you see there is a belief that such

courses have to be delivered by people from outside the organisation.

SF – In closing, what does winning the Afri-can Aviator Award mean to you?I feel privileged to be the winner of the launch edition of the African Aviator Award. But it has also given me a challenge as people will now look at me to see what output comes after winning the award.I feel good that the things I managed to do are appreciated by my colleagues who nominated me. I think they should also be happy. But maintaining what the award is there for is the biggest challenge. I also hope that the Civil Aviation Authority at home (Uganda), will look at the things we are trying to put across are positive and keep on investing in them. I think it will have that impact on management.

‘A better appreciation of the cockpit work environment will enable us to set better priorities as controllers.’

For the launch edition of the African Aviator Award (AAA), the Founda-tion had chosen the professional area of Air Traffic Management in its wid-est sense. The 2012 award was carried together with the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation

Wanjala's achievements included:• SMS gap analysis and implemen-

tation for the Air Navigation Services in Uganda

• Negotiated and promoted cockpit familiarisation flights between air traffic controllers and airlines

• Organised safety workshops and seminars with air traffic controllers and other aviation stake holders

• Strongly promoted open commu-nication between air traffic control and general aviation incl. organisa-tion of safety related forums

• As Air Traffic Management Inspector - carried out incident investigations with prime aim of finding the 'why' and not the 'who' - promoting maturing of a positive safety culture

• Initiated assistance to Southern Sudan (Juba) to improve ATC services

• Promoting professional standards through the Uganda Air Traffic Controllers’ Association

Wanjala's achievements

civil air navigation services organisation


2012 in Hindsight

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