Operations manuals are an integral part of any aviation business, whether you are an airline, emergency service or ground handler. They ensure staff are aligned and informed when it comes to day-to-day operations, implementing new practices and adhering to the latest regulations.
Therefore, it is vital that manuals are set out in a considered, informative and readable way, so staff can refer to them with ease. Put simply, this can be the difference between success and failure – of a mission, your reputation or even your business.
When it comes to the manuals themselves, it is not uncommon for aviation businesses to operate with giant, doorstep-sized tomes or codices that staff struggle to hold, let alone read. These are well tucked away and only dusted off when they’re audited. The truth is, paper documentation is an outdated practice and moving to an all-digital platform is a fantastic way to fine-tune your business and ensure maximum efficiency is achieved across your entire network. Offering digital versions of documents, like the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Ground Operations Manual (IGOM) – now in its seventh edition – makes them more accessible and far easier to work with.
Like all businesses, the success of ground handlers relies upon consistent and efficient execution, something that can only be achieved by ensuring the team knows exactly what to do and offering an easy and effective way of improving the way of working.
Why Go Digital?
Ensuring your ground handling services operate as efficiently as possible is the number one priority for any business in this sector of the aviation industry. Success lies in having a system in place whereby everything is aligned and operations manuals can be easily referred to. So why would moving your company’s documents from paper to digital improve the day-to-day running of your operations?
First, going to a paperless platform will bring about significant time and cost savings across your ground handling network, once the system has been fully implemented and staff have been suitably trained. In the past, all documentation will have been created using a word processing tool – such as Microsoft Word or Adobe FrameMaker to manage many thousands of pages of content. To update these large and complex documents, a dedicated librarian or a team of operations support specialists would be required to manually make the changes, however menial, in order to ensure the revision control and re-distribution of the document.
By implementing a digital platform, modifications can be made at the touch of a button while keeping the document revision in good order and then shared with your staff almost instantaneously. This is exactly the process that Web Manuals enables, bringing about considerable efficiency both economically and in terms of time.
Following on from this, the implementation of a digital documentation strategy will ensure that complying with the very latest regulations is as simple a process as possible. For ground handling services, this is an essential new challenge. New EASA regulations for ground handlers are on the horizon and the ISAGO and IS-BAH (International Standard for Business Aircraft Handling) standards are being initiated into the industry quickly as airlines and business jet operators are raising their expectations.
These new requirements can render your operations manuals redundant, no matter how recently they were updated, so being able to modify them as soon as a new regulation or standard is introduced is an extremely beneficial practice. This is true not only from the perspective of complying with customer demands, but also because many times there are considerable gains in safety and efficiency to be realized in the daily operation of the business.
Another significant way to improve knowledge sharing is by streamlining the handling of airlines’ own Ground Operations Manuals (GOM) that are filling the inboxes of your ground station managers. Each customer’s GOM contains a multitude of proprietary and non-standard requirements that they expect ground handlers to read and comply with at a moment’s notice. These unique demands need to be shared with the team on the apron, the passenger-facing team, as well as sub-contracted suppliers offering fuel, towing and catering.
Here, a powerful and agile digital authoring and distribution tool can help structure station-specific instructions that tie into the library of customer GOMs to facilitate the updating of the specific tastes and preferences of each client and allow immediate dispatch of the revised instructions to each team member. Even suppliers can be notified of the updates and the read-and-sign receipts can be of great value if something should ever go wrong.
Common Problems in Ground Handling
When it comes to the issues that ground handlers are faced with on a regular basis, there is no denying that the full digitization of operations manuals can go some way to alleviating them.
Constant communication is key, especially during periods of bad weather, or if there are flight delays, and having a fully digitized platform can enable ground handlers to better prepare and connect with colleagues, ensuring the impact of any issue is minimized.
Another area that consistently proves to be problematic for ground handlers is that facilities – such as aprons, ramps and runways – need to be kept in the best condition possible, as major problems can occur if they aren’t. Being able to log any faults on a digital platform will not only speed up the maintenance process but it will also ensure that all staff can be made aware of any issues.
As technology evolves, passengers continue to demand more from their travel experiences and to be actively involved in the pre- and post-flight stages of their journey. Our collective desire for technology to play an increasing role in our day-to-day lives does not stop at passengers; these changes can affect the way ground handlers adapt the services they offer, creating a more streamlined experience for passengers and staff.
Choose the Right Solution
There are a number of different options available for implementing a fully digital strategy. At Web Manuals, we operate various services including a fully-fledged digitization package and a custom portal, giving businesses complete flexibility and a more tailor-made experience. The ground handling services we work with, including Icelandair Ground Services, typically want the full digitization package because they recognize that it can significantly improve their operations.
Digitization is a necessity for any aviation business, regardless of the size or type of their operations simply because all areas of aviation are regulated and monitored in order to ensure safety. An airline may require a more detailed approach, due to the number of aircraft it has in its fleet and the number of staff on its books, compared to a helicopter operator with a smaller fleet size or a business jet operator that does not operate commercially.
There can be no denying that implementing a digital approach to ground handlers’ operations manuals can improve efficiency, but it is important that the transition from paper to paperless is carefully considered and that you know precisely what you want to achieve from the outset. We live in an age of convenience, which extends to the workplace, and a digitized system frees up space and time for other areas of your ground handling activity while helping you achieve continuous improvements that will sharpen your competitive edge.
Martin Lidgard is CEO and founder of Web Manuals. Lidgard founded Web Manuals in 2012, on the back of his experience working in software development and business consultancy roles. Having studied Engineering Physics at Lund Institute of Technology in Sweden, Lidgard shares his thoughts on why going digital is so important for the aviation industry and how it can improve day-to-day operations. Web Manuals is a world leader in document digitization across the aviation industry. It has established a vast portfolio of international clients – incorporating regional airlines, business aviation operators and helicopter management companies – enabling them to create, edit and distribute digital versions of their operations manuals on computers, smartphones and tablets.
