"Safety Stand-down Day" ???

[msw]

Our organization traditionally has an annual "Safety Stand-down Day" where all regular flight operations are suspended, and all flight crewmembers (approx 40 total) and maintenance personnel (17) attend one day of "safety related training" training. The purpose is to enhance safe flight/ground/ramp operations. Typically, the one day training has centered on a certain theme each year: one year we did "CRM", another year we did Fire Safety, another year it was a day of training on aircraft specific issues relating to a new airframe we were transitioning into. Sometimes we will split the flight crewmembers and maintenance personnel, and they have different topics (more specifically appropriate to their jobs), but held on the same day.

It's my responsibility to come up with this year's "theme" or training topic(s). The tricky part is to find something that might be of interest to (and pertinent to the jobs of) pilots, non-pilot crewmembers, and maintenance personnel. Or, to find one "theme" for the flight crews and a separate "theme" for the mechanics.
Do any of you hold similar Annual Safety Stand-down Days or training days within your organizations?

What topics have you done?

Any ideas?

Any useful input/ideas will be appreciated.

 

[JumpJetter]

try the Navy Safety Center

http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/presentations/aviation/default.htm

Try this link. It's to the navy's safety center. They have lots of presentations on all sorts of subjects. You may have to modify it to fit your outfit, but might spur some ideas.

JJ

 

[troy]

FOD--it is everyones responsibility

 

[jobear]

Yeah I remember when I was in the Navy after we lost 4 birds in a week (1991) we all started doing safety standowns every quarter.

Helped focus everyone on primary and secondary safety issues.
How could we ever do this in a 121 enviroment?

Jobear

 

[LJDRVR]

First off,

Congratulations on working for an organization that does more than just pay lip service to safety by following through with substantial action.

My first question would be who is going to present the material? If you are, then make your primary consideration selecting a topic with which you feel comfortable enough to teach, preferably one in which you are personally interested. That alone will go a long way to ensure that the attendees will get something positive out of it. If you are bringing folks in, then I would suggest trying to break the groups up for part of the day. Have a discipline-specific topic for each group of employess, but follow up with a period of instruction where everyone participates together in an area that effects the whole organization. Conduct that class in such a manner that some team-building and non-traditional communication is occuring, Especially between your pilots and Maintainers. An example would be to conduct a lecture-style briefing of several NTSB final reports. Pick mishaps that are germaine to your mission, where poor communication and organizational culture were causitive factors. Follow each lecture up with some sort of team building exercise where your work together in small groups to try and identify what went wrong, and how it might relate to your organizational culture. (Could this happen here? Why/why not?")

For the other part of the day here is a small list of possible topics: (Some of these are broad enough to include everyone)

Human Factors in Aviation* (As a whole or hit one or more individual points)
Automation Management
Flight Discipline & Professional Airmanship*
Cockpit Resource Management for the "real" world
Risk Management*
Pilots are from Mars, Mechanics are from Venus (Why can't these two groups communicate effectively?)

*My favorites

There are dozens more, I'd be happy to provide you with a list. Pick something dynamic that gets your employees thinking and communicating. Don't be afraid to present one or two Holy C___" accident scenarios, complete with CVR audio. Sometimes we all forget that we're playing this game for keeps. It's nice to be shocked into rememberance every once in a while. Also for case-scenarios consider using near-accidents that don't get as much publicity becaused everyone survived. For instance I know of a DC-9-30 that landed at Luke AFB with 4.7 gallons of fuel on board. Or an MD-80 that had a dual-engine flameout at FL350. They didn't get one turning until 13,000 feet. (Both Republic Airlines)

Mostly make it FUN. You are very fortunate your leadership understands the importance of being able to walk the walk. PM me if you need ANY help at all, I'd be happy to steer you in the right direction.

Good Luck!

PS. Poll your employee groups, find out what THEY consider important and topical. (Don't ask about specific topics, but about general issues. Use that info to help shape your descisions.)

 

[Pilot124]

Focus on Human Factors and why human error is still the leading cause of accidents.