
Most people can quickly point out just how close that incident became to being a very nasty accident and how lucky they were. In our organization we surely recognize this and the need to report “near misses” so we can be on the lookout for those potential catastrophes. This reporting has become one of the cornerstones of safety in our industry.
On a more alarming note, how many managers out there in the business treat the accident or incident that had negligible impact or consequences with less concern than the “big ticket” accident or incident? Sadly, many gloss over the extremely minor incidents as they “didn’t cost much” or my favorite, “it’s just part of doing business”. A couple of things for sure, 1) the cost to repair damaged aircraft or ground equipment does not go down and 2) our reputation as the premier ground handler suffers, from our customer’s perspective, even for the tiniest accidents. We see it time and time again, the difference between negligible and catastrophic can be measured by a centimeter or a second.
Some would ask how do we get past this and take operational ramp safety to a new level? From my perspective, it’s really quite simple and cost effective. Address the behavior that generates accidents, injuries and incidents, make procedural compliance the mantra! You are either following procedures or not! Accountability costs nothing and saves plenty. By focusing on procedural compliance, the safety risk on the ramp is reduced significantly.
The single most effective compliance tool that we have as managers is very powerful. When you walk past an infraction, for whatever the reason, you pass up on an opportunity to quickly and effectively fix compliance issues. More importantly, when you don’t address the issue, the message that you send is stronger than any safety procedure or alert that we could send out, “it’s OK to break the rules”. Certainly not the message we want to put out in the workplace.
Reducing risk is one means to increase EBIT, lower costs and increase predictability in our increasingly complex ground handling operations. What manager would not want that? It’s proven every day, procedural compliance reduces risk. By addressing procedural compliance failures when they are witnessed, risk is reduced.