Aviation is arguably the most safety-oriented industry in history and perhaps the industry most dominated by standards. Ground support is certainly no exception. From pushback to parking—from hand signals to weighing baggage, GS has standards dictated by city, county, state and fed, ad nauseam. Each of those “guvmint” bodies is convinced that aviation couldn’t fly without those standards. Then, of course, you set your own standards, which means you need to understand the characteristics of a good standard.
A good standard is…
1) Minimum
2) Trainable
3) Measurable
4) Of behavior, not outcome
Let’s look at each of these.
Minimum
A standard is not a quota, a goal or a daydream. It is not something we are going to do sometimes, but rather something we will do each time, all the time. This is imperative in aviation. We do not put jet fuel—rather than avgas—in jet aircraft most of the time. We do it each time, all the time. To do otherwise—to put avgas in a jet every now and then—would be disastrous. This is, therefore, a minimum standard. This is the very least we will do.
(This was a big problem when the Beechcraft King Air first hit the scene. Theretofore, aircraft with propellers had piston engines, so we filled them with avgas. The turbine-powered King Air had propellers, and more than one King Air was filled with avgas with catastrophic results. Same thing happened with the first turbine helicopters. Then a few years later, when most helicopters were turbine-powered, we had the reverse problem. By then some younger GS people had never seen a piston-powered helicopter, and thus assumed that all helicopters were turbine-powered. At an airport operation where I worked, we put jet fuel into an old piston-powered helicopter, a Bell-47. Fortunately, a very sharp pilot saved the day by spotting the problem quickly and landing in a soybean field near the airport.)
Trainable
Since a good standard is a minimum—the very least we will do—it must be a standard that we can reach and maintain. Therefore, it must be a standard that we can train each necessary person to achieve. Part of this comes from hiring the right people—you don’t hire dummies to fuel jets—and part of the job is training those people. If you have people who cannot learn to perform, you either have the wrong people, the wrong training program or the wrong standard. As the song says—Something’s Gotta Give. (Hint: If all of your people have trouble with a standard, chances are there is something wrong with that standard. Change it.)
Measurable
Folks, if this is a minimum standard, you gotta be able to measure compliance. If you can’t measure, you can’t enforce. If you can’t enforce, you don’t have a standard. The best standards are not just measurable—they are easily measured. Ideally, noncompliance of the standard will be readily apparent—it will almost leap out. One good example is the standard that we will not back up a fuel truck unless somebody is behind the truck providing signals. Now that’s measurable. If you see a fuel truck backing up without the guy/gal in back, the standard is being ignored.
Of Behavior, Not of Outcome
The desired outcome is that nobody backs a fuel truck into a Gulfstream or 747. It is not enough, however, to say, “Now you guys don’t be hitting any jets with that truck.” That is asking for an outcome, and that’s not good enough. That would be like telling a race driver before the Indianapolis 500, “Just keep turning left and get back as soon as you can.“ The good standard doesn’t ask for an outcome; it asks for the behavior that will produce a desired outcome. In this case, that behavior is to back up only when someone behind you is providing signals. (It is important to note here that standards deal with the behavior of people. Specifications—or specs—deal with things. Jet fuel and gasoline meet certain specs. Checking those fuels for water and other contaminants is a standard of behavior.)
That’s it for now. In a later article we will talk about how to execute and enforce good standards—we even have standards for that!
