Critical Thinking

 Critical Thinking

By OffRoadPilots

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally, understanding the

logical connection between opportunities and options. Critical thinking is also

known as the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. In essence,

critical thinking requires a person to use your ability to reason. It is about being an

active learner rather than a passive recipient of information. Critical thinkers

rigorously question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face

value. Critical thinkers seek to determine whether conditions, ideas or findings

represent the entire picture and are open to discover other opportunities. Critical

thinkers identify, analyse, and solve problems systematically rather than by

intuition or instinct. Critical thinking is thinking about things in certain ways as to

arrive at the best possible solution in the current circumstances. In other words, it

is a way of thinking about whatever is presently occupying a mind so that a person

comes to the best possible conclusion.

Critical Thinking is a way of

thinking about particular

things at a specific time and

is not the accumulation of

facts and knowledge but is

about the mindset

discovering options in a 3D

environment. A 3D

environment is a mindset

analysing opportunities in

time (speed), space

(location), and compass

(direction). Someone with critical thinking understands links between options, determine the

importance and relevance of options, and recognize, build, and analyse themdifferent avenues available. A person with critical thinking skills identifies inconsistencies and errors in reasoning, approach problems in a consistent and systematic way, and reflect on the justification of their own assumptions, beliefs,

and values.

The skills a person needs for critical thinking are varied and include observation,

analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem

solving, and decision making. Specific skills are to be able to think about a topic or

issue in an objective and critical way, identify the different options there are in

relation to a particular issue, evaluate a point of view to determine how strong or

valid it is, recognize any weaknesses or negative points that there are in the

evidence or argument, notice what implications there might be behind a

statement, and provide structured reasoning and support for options available.

Characteristics of critical thinking are open-mindedness, respecting evidence,

respecting reasoning, being able to consider different perspectives and points of

view and having cognitive flexibility, not being stuck in one position, develop

skepticism, and having clarity and precision.

Decision making skills are

required for critical thinking,

and there is a fine line

between a decision-making

process and a critical thinking

process, and critical thinking

is therefore different from

decision-making. Decision

making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. Using a step-by-step decision- making process can help a person to make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives. This approach increases the chances to choose the most satisfying, or appropriate alternative

possible. Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and

skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating data

generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as

a guide to an action.

There are seven steps to both a decision-making process and a critical thinking

processes.

Without a non-punitive policy, critical thinking is incompatible with aviation safety,

airline and airport operations, and the safety management system (SMS). One

reason that it is incompatible is that a certificate holder is required to appoint an

individual as accountable executive (AE) to be responsible for operations and

accountable on behalf of the certificate holder for meeting the requirements of

the regulations. Interpreting regulations does not allow for independent, or critical

thinking, but requires the accountable executive to follow a pre-established

compliance path. However, a functional SMS must accept resilience and

independent actions, and every person within an SMS organization are authorized

by the non-punitive policy to apply their critical thinking skills and action

accordingly. There is a difference between regulatory compliance and conforming

to regulatory requirements. Regulatory compliance, which is only available in a

static environment, and there is a regulatory compliance gap at the first movement

of an aircraft or airport operation. E.g., an airport receives an airport certificate

prior to accepting their first scheduled flight, and an airline receives their operating

certificate prior to launching their first flight. Regulatory compliance is about

technical, and tasks performed compliance, while conforming to regulatory

requirement is about work processes and how the work is done.An easy trap to fall into for an inexperienced AE is to apply regulatory requirement compliance to work practices. When applying regulatory compliance to operations, 100% of all personnel must comply with standard operating procedures 100% of the times, and to a level of 100% satisfaction. If one item is unsatisfactory, it is impossible to go back in time since there is motion in operations, and the person, pilot, or airside worker, failed. A failed person, causing regulatory non-compliance, cannot continue their operational tasks for the same reason that they are not able

to go back in time and fix their mistake. They are still able to redo their task, but it

is already too late since the non-regulatory compliance already has occurred.

When applying the principle for processes to conform to regulatory requirements,

e.g. performance-based regulations, then it becomes practical and work related to

maintain a healthy operation conforming to regulatory compliance.

Critical thinking is

incompatible with a

regulatory requirement for

airlines and airports to

operate with a process for

setting goals for the

improvement of aviation

safety and for measuring the

attainment of those goals

unless an SMS enterprise

operate with a non-punitive

policy. Determining goals

that improve aviation safety are subjective goals, and goals that fit inside the box.

Critical thinking becomes the outsider an unacceptable within an SMS system,

which is about consensus. The non-punitive policy itself must be without biased to

allow for critical thinking to flow freely.

Critical thinking is incompatible with a regulatory requirement to operate with

procedures for involving employees in the implementation and ongoing

development of the safety management system. At first sight this sounds like a great idea, and helpful to a healthy safety management system. Procedures are one-fit-all and established by management. Pilots or airside workers do not have the authority to establish their own preferred procedure. Procedures are ridged and all workers are required to follow establish procedures when conducting their work-related tasks. Critical thinking becomes an asset to operation when procedures allow for resilience, and independent evaluations when a task departs from the normal path. For critical thinking to be accepted, and SMS enterprise

must operate with, and apply without hesitation, a non-punitive policy.

Critical thinking is

incompatible with a

regulatory requirement to

operate with a system to

monitor the concerns of the

civil aviation industry in

respect of safety and their

perceived effect on the

holder of the certificate.

This regulatory requirement

requires an interpretation of

what the aviation industry

perceive, and open for a

wide range of interpretations. An airline may interpret an airport to be dangerous,

or unsafe since they operate differently than other airports without evidence of

fact. Perception is an exceptional evaluation tool, but it is necessary to know that perception is biased and filled with a ton of assumptions. This regulatory requirement is incompatible with critical thinking, since an airport must adapt to a customer's need to stay in business, which might not always be a path to safety in operations. An example is when the airport operator chose to operate with an

oscillating runway to satisfy one customer’s need to operate without being

interrupted by airport construction.

Critical thinking is an essential part of a healthy SMS, but the AE must accept the

non-punitive policy and that actions taken, whether it is a perfectly performed

checklist, complete procedure compliance, decisions by a committee after long

discussions, or by critical thinking do not always produce the expected outcome.

OffRoadPilots

Quality Assurance Program

 Quality Assurance Program

By OffRoadPilots

A successful quality assurance program is the result of an effective quality control

system. The purpose of a quality assurance program is to establish confidence or

certainty in abilities to maintain regulatory compliance and safety in operations.

When operating with a healthy quality assurance program, there should not be any

unknown findings associated with audits or inspections. Without a quality control

system in place, quality assurance, or certainty of operational control, is achieved

by random chance only.

Assurance is the process of

analyzing and using it to

assess operational processes

and records. Assurance is

verifying is records and

reports are as per SMS

principles. Assurance also

confirms whether the SMS

records are accurate.

Assurance is the task of

assessing processes,

operations, services, and

reliability. The main aim of

assurance is to check the accuracy of reports. It also assures the accountable executive, tenants, airport users, and stakeholders that there is no misrepresentation done in records, no misuse of funds, no fraud, and no fraudulent activities done in a company or done by the company. Assurance is applied to assess the process, the procedure, and operations, and these processes, procedures, and systems are observed closely to ensure the process is right and gives optimum results. Assurance specializes in assessing and improving the quality of the information in a company. Assurance is a tool that helps in the decision- making process as it works on customer feedback, airport and airline personnel

 feedback, feedback from the general public, or other areas where information is

required in organizational decision-making.

Quality assurance is about overseeing SMS processes as well as the final task to

ensure that operators are in compliance with regulatory requirements, standards

and their SMS policy. Quality assurance firstly requires operators to implement

their quality management system (QMS) and then involve audits or periodic

inspections of the system. Quality assurance hence means ensuring whether the

QMS is operating as expected i.e., helping to govern processes and output. With

quality assurance methods, operators generate key insights of their processes and

identify any nonconformity. When operating with a daily quality control system,

findings are discovered prior to audit and inspections. There are no good reasons

for audit findings.

Safety management is

different than safety

assurance since it is about risk

exposure or vulnerabilities in

airport or airline operations.

Risks are hazards defined by

exposure, likelihood and

severity that can affect

operations both tangibly and

intangibly such as workplace injuries, defective products, fire, loss in revenues,

market volatility, and negative publicity. Safety assurance is about internal and external exposures to identify the areas that are exposed to hazards. Safety

assurance methods include performing risk assessments, risk analysis, system

analysis, root cause analysis, corrective actions, or preventive actions.

Over a period of three years, all regulatory non-compliance findings for airports

were of their obligations as airport operators, and of their quality assurance

programs. Regulatory non-compliance findings were given to small, medium, and

large international airports. There are no good reasons for airports, or airlines, to work with processes that generates findings. It is just as simple and easy to do things right as it is to do it the wrong way.

A quality assurance program

is a component and integral

part of a safety management

system (SMS), and is

managed by the SMS

manager, in the same

manner as the other

components of an SMS is

managed by the SMS

manager. A safety

management system must

include a safety policy, a

goalsetting process and to

measure the attainment of

their goals, hazard

identification process and

manage associated risks, training processes, reporting processes, a quality

assurance program, review and audit processes, and any other requirements

prescribed by the regulations. Without a quality assurance program, an SMS is

incomplete since there is a lack of quality control. A safety management system is

a businesslike approach to safety. In a successful business, cashflow quality control

is achieved by cash register entries. Quality assurance of a business is to conduct

review and audits to learn about cash register reliability, and compliance with

regulatory accounting principles. Quality assurance of a safety management

system is to conduct review and audits to learn about data entry reliability and

learn to what level their processes conform to regulatory requirements. An

example of compliance level could be a safety policy that the accountable

executive has approved but not communicated to all personnel.

The quality assurance

program includes a process

for quality assurance that

includes periodic audits of

activities and audits, for

cause of those activities. The

certificate holder (CH) is

responsible for records

relating to the findings

resulting from the quality

assurance program are

distributed to appropriate

manager for corrective

action and follow-up. It is

important to note that

corrective actions from

audits and follow-up are

assigned to operational managers, and not to the SMS manager. A complete audit

is due within 12 months after a certificate is issued, and audits of the entire quality

assurance program carried out every three years, calculated from the initial audit.

Conventional wisdom is that an audit of the entire quality assurance program

(QAP) is an audit of the audit itself. When the regulations call for an audit of the

entire quality assurance program, they are calling for an audit of the airport’s

quality assurance program, which is how airport personnel do their work to ensure

quality delivery of services. Quality assurance includes the prerequisite of a daily

quality control system. An audit of the entire QAP is therefore an audit of

regulatory compliance, standard compliance, SMS policy compliance, process

compliance, and safety in operations compliance within all areas of airport

operations and their third-party contractors. In other words, the quality assurance

program to be audited is quality assurance of how the work is done day in and day

out, as opposed to how work is expected to be done. If a quality assurance

program is implemented to find faults based on arbitrary expectations, then the

Without control, quality cannot be measured.quality assurance of actual work done is eliminated. A quality assurance program is not separated from operations but is the operations itself. On the other hand, an audit conducted by an external auditor is designed to find faults based on expectations, since a third-party, or external auditor only knows the expectations

and does not know random work practices.

A quality assurance program

requires audit checklists to

be used. A simplified audit

checklist has three options,

which are Yes, No, or N/A,

and a field for comments.

Airport audits are of all

activities controlled by an

airport operations manual

(AOM). Areas controlled of

an AOM are the standards

to be met and the services

to be provided by an airport operator. Standards to be met are airport standards

compliance for issuance, and maintenance of the airport certificate. Services to be

met are services by the airport operator to maintain regulatory compliance, and

additional services required for airport operations, such as aircraft parking, fuel

service, apron for boarding and deplaning passengers and other services required

for an airport to provide customer service.

There are no requirements for a certificate holder to appoint a quality assurance

manager. However, several SMS enterprises are assigning the quality assurance

portfolio to a responsible manager. A safety management system is under the

control of an accountable executive. With the lines of authority established, the

certificate holder has a tool to navigate their quality assurance program. An AE is

responsible for meeting the requirements of the regulations, while the liability

rests with the certificate holder.

All answers to quality assurance lays within the numbers of PI.An operational daily quality control system is applied for successful navigation of

the quality assurance program. The quality control system is a daily rundown of

tasks and activities, and where these activities are linked to regulatory

requirements, standard requirements, or SMS policy statements.

Operating with a quality assurance program is a simple task since it does not

change any of the work practices or processes. The quality assurance program

required includes a process for quality assurance that includes periodic reviews or

audits of the activities authorized under a certificate and reviews or audits, for

cause, of those activities. For a quality assurance to be effective it is monitoring

operations to review patterns and for tasks and activities to remain within their

assigned paths. A daily rundown within a quality assurance program assigns

multiple regulatory links to one task. One example is the daily inspection at

airports. Not only are several of the obligations of an airport operator taken care

of, but any findings during the inspection are automatically populated into a

hazard register. By applying this principle, a finding, which normally is negative to

operations, is turned around to a positive event by adding it to the hazard register

and comply with an SMS requirement. SMS is not about the negatives, but about

the positive, and discover why things goes right and to discover positive events

from findings. Conducting change management, safety cases, and system analyses

are all components of a healthy quality assurance program. By conducting these

tasks an SMS enterprise comply with their regulatory SMS requirement to operate

with a safety management system that includes a quality assurance program. As

their daily rundown system is populated with tasks, activates and work practices,

they establish their tailored quality assurance system.

A successful quality assurance program happily welcomes the required triennial

audits since a daily quality control system maintain regulatory compliance and

safety in operations.

OffRoadPilots