Lessons learned from aviation safety.

Fred Manuele said we need to look at strong environment, health, and safety management systems. I could not agree more. Over my career, I have worked in three departments that had safety in their titles: Pre-Clinical Drug Safety Assessment, Environment, Health, and Safety, and Aviation Safety. The principles of Prevention through Design (PtD) are the same for all. For example, physicians collect information on adverse effects of drugs from the field. They then turn this information over to the pharmaceutical companies. In response, the pharmaceutical companies evaluate the data and make necessary changes, such as altering the label of a drug, talking to practitioners about their findings, or pulling the product from the market. The data are then given to their Research and Development department and their molecular designers. They identify which portion of the molecular structure had the potential to cause the adverse side effects. The portion that is necessary for the preferred pharmacological effect is kept in. They try to maximize the good, while minimizing the bad. That's a good example of PtD. Now, I am also responsible for the aviation industry. The same principles of PtD apply. How? Take, for example, our new Navy helicopter, the CH-53K Heavy Lift. We went back to the engineering department developing this new model with all of our data. Rising rates of ergonomic related injuries were being seen in the original model and our engineers were looking for ways to eliminate them. They designed safe manufacturing into the build process. From initial feedback, the Sikorsky Corporation will be very successful in controlling their future workers' compensation costs for employees building this new model. Leading and trailing indicators of performance are something we study. Our mantra is that we want our helicopters to be the safest to fly (we have the lowest aviation accident rates in our field), the safest to build, and the safest to own. If anything happens in the field, we pick the information up through the customers and our reps, and give the data to the Aviation Safety Board. During routine maintenance other things may also be picked up. When we redesign parts, we immediately supply designers of the new models with them, as well as including them in the old models. Our hazard resolution process is to: identify the potential hazard, assess the risk level, contain the hazard, investigate the root cause, eliminate or control the hazard, ensure the corrective action is effective, and convey information back to the programmers and engineers. I want to talk about our helicopters being the safest to own. When I first got in the field, someone said to me at a conference, “It's unethical to fly people out to the oil rigs in anything other than the safest helicopter to fly.” What about being the safest to own? For example, our aircraft are operated off of oil rigs in very harsh conditions, like the North Sea. This environment adds incredible challenges, such as extreme winds, and cold and slippery conditions. On occasion, our customers have to access the top of the helicopters, while parked on an oil rig platform, or on the back of a guided missile frigate in the North Atlantic. To accommodate this, we are engineering fall protection lanyard connection points onto the aircraft. Even in a hangar, working on the aircraft can be made safe.