Fatigue

Recently I took the opportunity to attend an aviation training conference presented close by in Orlando by Civil Aviation Training Magazine. This is an annual meeting and it consists of several tracks, including one concerned with maintenance training. I was able to attend the seminar moderated by Bill Johnson, the FAA's Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor. Bill is a PhD who has been working with aviation folks for as long as I can remember. Some of his other work includes a significant study on how technicians can better troubleshoot, and comprehensive work on maintenance resource management, to name a few. His work relating to fatigue within the maintenance workplace could not be more important. As you all have heard the FAA has been under fire for the recent slew of "sleep occurrences" in our control towers. This has placed the public spotlight squarely on the problem and, as I write, experts are meeting to discuss ways to overcome the problem. I wonder how long this difficulty has really existed? Can you imagine that tower operators and controllers have, all of a sudden, been bitten by the tse tse fly? Regardless it is, in finality, dereliction of duty and those who are guilty of this should receive the appropriate consequences. I bring this to fore because we do not want to see this spotlight hitting maintenance technicians, who work just as long and under more arduous conditions. Additionally, heretofore, most of the focus and regulatory effort, when it comes to fatigue and rest management, concerns pilots. There is no fault in this. The subject is complicated. It relates to putting in rules that achieve maximum safety with crew ops, while at the same time such policy can result in a conflict with business interests and the bottom line. This fight does not concern technicians because management does what it wants in exhorting workplace performance from its technician force: because it can. There are no significant rules governing the hours or environment in which the technician works. This is why the work Bill Johnson and, incidentally, the FAA FAASTeam, is doing in this area is critical. Some of the material I gleaned from Bill's workshop includes: 1) There have been a number of workshops held examining the subject of fatigue in the mx workplace. The comprehensive participant list included: FAA certification, flight standards, FAAST, ATO, air carriers, manufacturers, MROs, unions, scientists, and international regulators. 2) These workshops delineated a number of challenges and actions in response to such challenges, including: industry culture, fatigue assessment, scheduling practices, lack of government action, education, work/life balance, research, and root cause analysis. 3) Line Observations Safety Assessments (LOSA), this includes (a) a system for formal observation of all workplace activities, including fatigue, (b) ways to inform the work force about fatigue and its results, (c) targeted enhancements to the work regimen, (d) the importance of union and management concurrence on handling the problem, (e) confidentiality and security relating to the subject matter, peer to peer observations, the establishment of a group of trusted observers and volunteers to work the issue, and finally (f) a comprehensive overview of normal operations with the goal of spotting any fatigue-related situations. 4) With the establishment of a LOSA system, customized training related to fatigue can be created, forms and procedures can be created to track the system and data can be ascertained that will assist in determining such things as root cause, etc. This is an important subject, too much so to cover in one blog. For those interested, the FAA has put out an excellent CD titled "Fatigue Countermeasure Workshop." It includes subjects such as fatigue basics, sleep basics, countermeasures to fatigue, and an exam to see how well you comprehended the material. You can get this CD by going online to http://www.mxfatigue.com/. While at the web site be sure to watch the new 20-minute fatigue video titled "Grounded: It is not "your father's government film." Stay tuned for updates to this important subject.