| Work Package
1 Work Package 2 Work Package 3 Work Package 4 Work Package 5 WP 1.1
(Requirements and Task Definition) conducts a task analysis
of maintenance tasks using behavioural, cognitive and scenario-based
methodologies. The task analyses provides the data to support a
generic human factors-based taxonomy of tasks which will in turn
provide a common framework for ensuing work packages. WP 1.2
(Professional Skills) conducted reviews of assessment methodologies
in related industries and prepared analyses of previous research
in aircraft maintenance in order to develop a tool for the assessment
of professional skills and recommendations for how this could be
used for event analysis. This enables the identification of critical
professional skills for different categories of personnel taking
into account organisational differences. A formal methodology for
assessing these professional skills is proposed. WP 1.3
(Event Information Management) developed a comprehensive
approach to the collection and management of information concerning
safety and reliability events in the aviation maintenance environment.
This work package aimed at integrating two different but complementary
reactive and proactive approaches regarding Event and Risk Management.
WP 1.4
(Organisational Systems) developed an organisational systems
analysis that addresses major shortcomings in current understanding:
the problems of organisations in responding effectively to incidents
and accidents; the reasons for the failure of many Human Factor
programmes; the lack of analysis of change processes (changing organisational
systems and culture); and how specific Human Factors considerations
should be built into organisational change. 
WORK PACKAGE 2. INTEGRATION
OF REQUIREMENTS
WP 2.1 (Synthesis
of requirements and specification of evaluation criteria)
represents the most critical phase of the project. It has to achieve
an integration of the requirements at the levels of task, professional
skills, incidents and organisational processes. This must be sufficient
to ensure that the tools and methodologies to be developed in Work
package 3 will be based on a coherent conceptual framework and will
be entirely complementary in their objectives and design. WP 2.2
(Cost Benefit Evaluation) begins the process of developing
a methodology for assessing the costs and benefits of the interventions
that are being developed in the other work packages. In close co-operation
with the other work packages, dimensions will be identified that
are susceptible of evaluation in terms of costs and benefits. The
tools, methods and changes emerging from Work package 1 will all
be considered and, where possible, will be incorporated into a framework
for setting up case studies in which costs and benefits can be monitored.
WP 3.1
(Design Guidelines and Tools) will put Human Factors at the
heart of design trade-offs and provide a traceable rationale for
past design decisions. Specific attention will be paid to the documentation
of design rationale in the design tools and design review processes.
It will integrate the design for maintainability guidelines (with
an emphasis on Human Factors) into the appropriate design tools
to assist both the physical aspect of the task (e.g. access) and
the cognitive aspects of the task (e.g. analysis of consequences
of forgetting to execute a task). The integration of design tools
will be evaluated. WP 3.2
(Quality auditing) will develop and evaluate auditing and
assessment methodologies at three levels: the task; deployment of
professional skills, and organisational performance. These methodologies
are designed to complement the normal auditing activity of checking
the administration of activities in an organisation with practical
ways of assessing task requirements and task performance and the
performance of teams across an extended sequence of activities.
WP 3.3
(Events and organisational learning). A review of existing
incident management and analysis systems, such as BASIS and MEDA
leads to the conclusion that most data remain unused (never retrieved
from the data base), and organisational learning is reactive and/or
stunted. These systems are effective only to the extent that they
can test (confirm or deny) existing though often implicit safety
models: they do not facilitate creative solutions. The goal of this
Organisational Learning work is to promote and evaluate focused
organisational learning about safety-related issues, acknowledging
the need for a better understanding of the information that incidents
can provide and how to process.
WP 4.1
(Manufacturer Evaluation). The specifications for all aspects
of system design will be developed in the various work packages
in Work package 1. The evaluation of the “development and
pilot implementation” phase is the main emphasis of this work
package. This work package will quantify the impact of needing to
consider the human factors aspects of the system design. In the
past, the different “soft” aspects of the system were
not sufficiently considered when developing the systems’ requirements.
WP 4.2 (Maintenance Organisation Evaluation) The evaluation in relation to maintenance organisations will address the outputs of WPs 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and interim progress on 4.3. It will include several dimensions:
Progress: Work package to finish by end of March 2004 WP 4.3
(Cost Benefit Case Studies) - On the basis of the framework
developed in WP2.2, case studies will be designed and run in order
to generate data on costs and benefits of the interventions proposed
in Work package 3. The data on costs and benefits will be used to
identify the reduction in costs of maintenance of aircraft that
could be achieved by the implementation of the human-centred interventions
on which this research programme focuses. The assessment of this
contribution to savings in the costs of maintenance will be done
by monitoring costs and benefits in the case studies, and by developing
a methodology for extrapolating these results to general implementation
of the interventions. A by-product will be the system for evaluating
any human-centred interventions in aircraft maintenance.
WORK PACKAGE 5. FINALISATION
WP 5
(Finalisation). This work-package provides the opportunity
to finalise all the outstanding deliverables of the project. This
work package explicitly recognises that it is important to fully
take account of the process of evaluation and review in WP4 and
to ensure that the projects outputs fully reflect the lessons for
that process. This work package will also synthesise the outputs
of the project into a user-guide to human centred management for
aircraft maintenance.
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