ORM in the real world

Flying Safety, Oct, 2003 by John Heib

At the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), which oversees contractor aircraft operations for the DoD worldwide, we have embraced the ORM concept, just as have all the militry Services. HQ DCMA Aircraft Operations (DCMA-AO) teaches it during our Government Flight Representative (GFR) and Aviation Maintenance Manager (AMM) training courses, and we require all waiver requests to include an ORM analysis. The goal is for our Aviation Program Teams (APTs) to use ORM to the maximum extent practical. This article describes how I used ORM to resolve a deficiency we had with a contractor's Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) capability to protect our aircrews.

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Let's start with the ARFF program background. The contractor manufactured heavy aircraft for the Air Force through contracts administered by DCMA and had recently been bought (through merger) by another aircraft manufacturer. The new company inherited a fire department (FD) that was considerably smaller than what they had at their other locations. The primary Air Force instruction that covered contractor facilities and ARFF was AFMCI 91-101 (since replaced by National Aerospace Standard 3306). It was not on the contract. What was on contract was AFJI 10-220, a Joint Instruction, which requires the company to operate in a safe and effective manner whenever the Government, by contract, assumes some or all of the risk of loss. The key concept here is contractors meet the standards they are paid to meet. If you try to force a contractor to meet a standard higher than what the contract calls for, you create what we call a "constructive change." This is not a good thing unless you have lots of money.

The company had no indigenous ARFF capabilities, but they had a full-time fire response team on duty during all three shifts and three fire response vehicles available at the plant. None of the vehicles was capable of conducting ARFF operations. The local airport authority did have limited onsite ARFF capability, including one ARFF truck, a quick-response vehicle known as a combined agent vehicle (CAV), and a twin-agent CAV. Reasonable and "safe and effective" may seem like gray, nebulous terms on paper, especially when you consider the cost of obtaining and maintaining an adequate ARFF capability to protect our aircrew, but it is not so. Consider what is the minimum standard from the point of view of the firefighter and the aircrew. Both would probably agree that in the case of, say, a KC-135R fire, a 1690-gallon CAV does not an ARFF vehicle make. That sets up the problem. Now, to the ORM Process.

The ORM Process

To solve our problem, a team was formed consisting of both contractor and DCMA personnel. An effective review of ARFF processes and flight operations would have been extremely difficult were it not for the open and frank cooperation between all team members. I find it is useful to find common ground and common goals whenever dealing with complex (and expensive) safety-related issues. After all, we all want to do things the right way, the safe way. As it turns out, all team members were in agreement concerning ARFF at the facility.

DCMA is a joint agency, so we are not bound by any particular service's ORM process. So, I chose the Marine Corps' program just to try it out "HOO-RAH!" The USMC process can be found at their safety web site, www.hqmc.usmc.mil/safety/. In the case before me, following any of the services' ORM processes would have resulted in identical results.

Except for me, no one on the team had any training in ORM, and this was the very first time I used the process. So, before we began I handed out copies of the Marine Corps Order and gave the team the USAF ORM training course compressed into about 30 minutes, as I quickly covered all the basics. To me, learning ORM is like assembling a bicycle--it gets easier each time you do it, as long as you first read the step-by-step instructions.

ORM is a decision-making tool used by people at all levels to increase operational effectiveness by anticipating hazards and reducing the potential for loss, thereby increasing the probability of a successful mission. That is, it's not just a process for reducing risk, it's a process for analyzing operations and implementing risk controls so that operations can extend into areas that would not be permissible using standard operating procedures.

Identifying Hazards

This is step one in the ORM process. The contractor along with the Aviation Program Team (GFR + AMM + Safety Specialist) had developed a list of hazardous operations prior to the ORM assessment visit; this shortened the ORM process for me considerably. The operations they identified were obviously not the only hazardous operations found around aircraft in general, and the contract aircraft in particular. They were, however, the operations most likely to require an ARFF response, including:

1. Aircraft APU first start or first start after replacement