weeks. Meanwhile, the FAA has compiled information and resources for employees who
have been a ffected in any number of ways, available here .
We have contingency plans in place to help us ensure NAS safety for catastrophic
events like hurricanes, but how familiar a re we with those plans when it is time to
implement them? And what plans do we have in place for our everyday tasks?
This week, Technical Operations employees across the country participated in the first
Operation al Safety Focus on Operational Risk Management (ORM) — an event
designed to give management, labor and stakeholders the opportunity to have
discussions about the decisions employees make when working in the NAS and the
operational safety impacts of those decisions.
ORM is the last line of defense as we proactively manage projects and maintenance that
could have an operational consequence on the NAS services we provide. This is critical
in an air traffic system as large and complex as ours, where a simple outage at one
facility can have far reaching effects and impacts. With so many people relying on our
services, we have to make sure our primary focus remains on safety.
For this week's Operational Safety event, Vaughn Turner, vice president of Technical
Operations, Glen Martin, vice president for Air Traffic Services, and Mike Perrone, PASS
president, gathered at the Command Center to speak with Command Center and
Potomac TRACON Technical Operations employees about ORM. Similar discussions
were held acro ss the country, led by FAA and labor leadership.
Vaughn likes to use the term "measure twice, cut once" – which is elaborated on in the
eight ORM core principles that Tech Ops designed to guide the work they perform
throughout the NAS with technical precision. The core principles guide employees to
make sure there is a plan in place for the work tha t is to be performed, identify any
operational consequences to the services we provide, communicate and properly
coordinate the work with our stakeholders, and ensure that mitigations are in place to
quickly restore service in case anything goes wrong. Tak ing this kind of proactive
approach helps combat the kind of complacency that can result from performing
repetitive tasks.
We are all one FAA with a shared goal to provide safe services to our stakeholders, but
ORM doesn't fall on our Technical Operation s employees alone. Making sure we're
having meaningful dialogue around proposed work is a shared responsibil ity with Air
Traffic Services. ORM discussions started with TechOps during this week's Operational
Safety F ocus on Operational Risk Management will continue with Air Traffic discussions
in the coming weeks ... and then we'll have another Operational Safety event for
Technical Operations in six months.
We want to hear from you about how this first event went, and what ideas you have for
ways to continue to improve ORM. Please email 9 - awa - orm@faa.gov or visit
https://my.faa.gov/go/orm to learn more.
Thanks everyone!
Teri L. Br istol ATO Chief Operating Officer
