98 AVBUYERMAGAZINE– July 2018 http://www.AVBUYER.com Aircraft Index see Page 129
OPERATING SAFETY
How to get Value From
BizAv Safety Audits
How can Flight Departments get more from an audit?
Mario Pierobon considers some of the intricacies of
Business Aviation audits and how they can help
the ongoing improvement of safety practices...
uditing is one of the most established
tools that a Business Aviation Flight
Department can deploy to monitor its
safety performance. Audits can relate to
a variety of operational aspects
(including compliance with industry regulatory
requirements and safety performance), helping you
monitor these against your established safety
objectives.
With a wealth of knowledge that can be derived
from audits it’s vital that Flight Departments develop
knowledge of how to treat audit information to
maximize the value.Keeping Audits and Inspections Separate
Audits can commonly be confused with inspections,and the terms ‘audit’ and ‘inspection’ are often
misused interchangeably. Flight Departments must
be clear that audits are conducted to get a sense of
how the department is currently performing as
compared to how it shouldbe performing.
The audit assesses how comprehensively a set of
requirements are being met, and the scope of the
audit is normally very detailed.
Conversely, the scope of an inspection tends to
be far more limited. Inspections are conducted more
at the micro-level (typically requiring assessment of
how line operatives perform compared to the
operational guidelines they’re given), whereas an
audit would usually require in-depth review of
the organizational set up, and discussion with
key personnel.A
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