Photo By Misha King | Kevin Verdon, Defense Contract Management Agency Aircraft Operations Risk Assessment...... read more read more
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FORT LEE, Va. - The DCMA Aircraft Operations Directorate provides actionable insight from factory floor to the front lines.
When the director of the Defense Contract Management Agency announced the agency’s new mission statement last fall, she said DCMA is uniquely poised on the factory floor to the front line continuum to provide insight to its program partners so they can make the best decisions about their contracts and the resulting products and services. The director envisions accomplishing this mission as one team with one voice, delivering global acquisition insight that matters.
Every DCMA directorate has an important stake in executing these statements. The Aircraft Operations Directorate is very familiar with these concepts, as operating with this mindset is the status quo.
“The mission and vision statements provide the exclamation point to reinforce what AO has strived for years to attain and perfect,” said Navy Capt. Drew Swenson, AO executive director. “We provide our primarily active duty workforce with the knowledge and tools they need to successfully execute their mission of being the Department of Defense’s eyes and ears. Our job is ensuring our nation’s air assets are produced, overhauled, modified, and repaired safely and effectively to minimize the time these critical war machines are out of the battlespace. We do this through our risk management process.”
AO’s risk management process helps prevent mishaps in aircraft operations. It combines aircraft operations inspections, known as AOIs, corrective action plans and the Contract Management Office Risk Advisory Board. These processes have had a significant impact on lowering risk and consistently resolving AO’s safety issues by vastly improving efficiencies and providing better contract administration services oversight.
“Standardized and effective processes are at the heart of everything we do, and this can only be achieved by speaking with one voice from the headquarters staff to the aviation program teams out in the field,” Swenson said.
AOIs allow AO personnel to be the agency’s eyes and ears on the factory floor and beyond by identifying deficiencies within DCMA’s and contractors’ programs and operations.
“The AOI is an objective, structured process using aviation professionals to generate a subjective risk rating based on frames of reference developed through inspections of similar aviation facilities,” explained Kevin Verdon, AO Risk Assessment Program manager. “The five major elements we inspect are command and administration, flight operations, ground operations, quality and contract safety. Each one has a series of subelements.”
The goal of an inspection is to look at both government and contractor operations to determine where the government’s risk lies and how well that risk is mitigated in order to prevent mishaps. This goal ties directly back to DoD’s risk management program objectives.
“DoD accepts risk of loss under certain terms when contractors are performing ground or flight operations under the Ground Flight Risk Clause, known as the GFRC,” explained John Gallagher, a contract safety specialist assigned to the contract safety Midwest team out of Wichita, Kansas. “But, this ‘relief’ doesn’t come for free; it requires the contractor to submit its ground and flight procedures for government approval, and its day-to-day aircraft operating procedures are subject to government surveillance. The AOI spot-checks the local DCMA AO team and its contractor for compliance and provides a hands-on training opportunity as well. This is all aimed at reducing risk to DoD aircraft operations.”
AOIs are conducted by an AOI team, a joint group of aviation professionals that inspects compliance of both the contractor and the DCMA unit and performs a risk-based assessment of the contractor facility. The team comprises personnel from AO headquarters as well as those from the Operations, Special Programs and International directorates, and from Aircraft Integrated Maintenance Operations. The team members individually average over 20 years of aviation experience and are subject matter experts in their particular elements.
The team typically consists of a team lead, team deputy, ground lead, one or two ground inspectors, a contract safety inspector and one or two quality assurance auditors. The lead inspects command administration and is responsible for the final report, as well as the in-brief and out-brief. The deputy inspects flight operations for both the contractor and DCMA and helps create slide presentations, travel plans and other support tasks. The ground inspectors are responsible for inspecting contractor ground operations, while the contract safety inspector inspects mishap plans, flight safety, and contractor facilities and hangars where aircraft are housed. The QA auditors inspect DCMA personnel and programs.
“The team is matrixed and multidisciplinary, drawing on expertise from across the enterprise, to include aviators, aviation maintenance and logistics experts, and quality and contract safety,” said Verdon. “It may also be augmented by service personnel from the Naval Air Systems Command, the Army’s Directorate of Evaluation and Standardization or the Air Force Materiel Command. Our success is due in significant measure to the support we’re provided by the directorates, centers, CMOs and the services.”
Gallagher, who is one of several contract safety managers assigned to the team, said although AOI team members have different expertise and responsibilities, there are common threads keeping them in sync.
“We work together using effective teaming and communication and by using systematic and standardized evaluation tools and approaches,” he said. “We also have very dedicated individuals; that’s key along with their experience. There’s a tremendous collective synergy when we get together to discuss our findings and validate our risk determinations.”
When the team is not on an AOI, they meet periodically through electronic mediums to discuss and share information. “All this helps us stay connected and speaking with the same voice,” continued Gallagher.
A typical AOI begins on a Monday morning with a contractor in-brief followed by a facility tour where the contractor shows the AOI team its processes and workflow and what work is done and where. The real work begins right after the contractor gives the team the lay of the land.
“Most ground inspectors start by reviewing the government ground representatives training records, surveillance plans and data trending,” explained Paul Smith, director of the Aircraft Operations Division. “We start inspections on all the ground elements. There also might be a chance to observe an aircraft towing or refueling operation. But, we can’t direct the contractor to perform an operation, so we normally ask for a heads up as to when they plan to do certain activities.”
During this stage of the AOI, the flight operations team members may also have a chance to do a supervisory flight with either a contractor crew or DCMA pilot if aircraft is available. The QA auditor normally looks at government and DCMA records while the team lead interviews the commander and looks at other documentation. The safety inspector looks at facilities and visits with the fire department to inspect the fire trucks and fire gear.
“They also look at aircraft fuel supply and trucks,” Smith added. “They may perform an emergency response drill on Tuesday or Wednesday as well. A likely scenario is an aircraft fire or crashed aircraft in which the fire department needs to respond within three minutes with rescue equipment.”
Each inspection day ends with a hot wash between the AOI team, the contractor and the aviation program team, or APT.
“This is where we give the APT and contractor our daily findings,” Smith said. “This meeting is designed to be a conversation because it allows the APT and contractor to follow up with us in case we didn’t interview the right people or see the right things. We also work out any other issues that may arise and provide a status update of our inspection progress.”
APTs are assigned to CMOs that manage aircraft operations. They’re responsible for the government’s surveillance of contractor aircraft operations whenever DCMA Instruction 8210.1 is written as a requirement on a contract. The team consists of a government flight representative, government ground representative, contract safety manager and a quality assurance representative.
“The APT works as a team to make critical decisions about the safety and effectiveness of each contractor flight or ground operation,” said Verdon. “This assures that aircraft are maintained and operated by contractors in accordance with contract requirements.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the AOI team continues inspecting the five major elements and their subelements, and if needed, they continue into Thursday morning. The team members complete their individual reports, and the final report package is finalized that evening. The team lead wraps up the AOI Friday morning with an out-brief to the CMO commander and the APT that includes electronic copies of the slide presentation, executive summary and a detailed report addressing every sub-element and write-up. This package is also sent to individual directorates and AO headquarters.
“We don’t provide this information to the contractor, though” Smith explained. “The ground flight representative will formally communicate the AOI write-ups to the contractor through contractor surveys or corrective action requests.”
If the AOI team finds issues during an inspection, corrective action plans and the CMO Risk Advisory Board, known as CAPs and the CRAB, are then used to address any elevated risk. A CAP is a set of actions taken to mitigate or remove hazards and their causes.
“CAPs provide a structured approach to risk mitigation by determining root causes and evaluating the residual risk remaining after implementation of corrective actions,” said Verdon. “They’re entered into a common database to allow senior managers the ability to monitor risk areas and to share mitigation strategies across the AO enterprise.
When CAPs are entered into the database, site APT members are required to update each record for their site and forward them through their chain of command for ground flight representative and CMO approval within 70 calendar days from the release of the final report. Division directors review the CAPs prior to their submission to the CRAB. The CRAB is chaired by Swenson, and its goal is to measure the timeliness and effectiveness of the risk mitigation efforts employed across the enterprise.
“CAPs left open from the most recent CRAB will remain in an open status until all corrective actions have been completed and the completed plan has been reviewed by the next and subsequent CRABs,” Swenson explained.
CAPs reviewed during the CRAB process are closed when documented corrective actions have removed the root cause, mitigated risk, subsequent program audits have identified no recurring findings identified in the CAP, and the APT has recommended the CAP be closed.
“In some cases if one of these elements can’t be completed, discussions between the APT and CRAB will determine if the CAP warrants closure with documented risk,” added Swenson. “The approval and review process for the plan ensures senior leadership is aware of risk issues and can apply resources as necessary to mitigate or accept risk to the government.”
Aircraft operations are inherently risky, which makes mitigation and assessment tools necessary. Swenson said the AO inspection program enables the directorate to continuously assess the effectiveness of its policies, tools and training and provide actionable data to improve processes and mitigate risk across the entire AO enterprise.
“We have a tremendous amount at stake,” Verdon acknowledged. “We are in the business of protecting and preserving vital national defense resources destined for the warfighter. It’s a team effort — not just the AOI team conducting the inspections, but everyone involved on the factory floor all the way up to headquarters staff and the DCMA director. We have to work together to proactively address risk in order to effectively and safely conduct ground and flight operations. Our taxpayers and our warfighters depend on us and the actionable insight we provide.”
| Date Taken: | 06.18.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 06.18.2015 09:53 |
| Story ID: | 167106 |
| Location: | FORT LEE, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 173 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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