Helping New Maintenance Hires Adapt to the Airport Operating Environment (2013)

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10 Many of the roughly 4,600 GA airports open to the public are located in areas of the country where the local workforce is not educated in the operation of airports. In hiring mainte- nance workers from the local communities, airport operators are charged with helping the new employee adapt to a new and sometimes bewildering environment. This chapter highlights several of the major challenges and issues that face airport managers as they attempt to inte- grate newly-hired maintenance personnel into their organiza- tions, chief among them the lack of instructional resources and skilled instructors, reduced workforces and budgets, variable workforce quality, and time constraints on the train- ers. As one survey respondent wrote, “City budget = no training & no travel.” The problems associated with the training of new mainte- nance hires at airports are illustrated by several quotes from airport operators participating in the study: My maintenance personnel are also the airport operations staff. They are first and foremost maintenance people and when new they are unfamiliar with airports or airfield safety. I am tasked with teaching them about airports and [ . . . ] how to stay safe when in the air operations area. I do this by taking 1 or 2 top- ics at a time, like proper radio communications. I have to make up material, teach them the material, practice it, and then test them to make sure they absorbed the information (although not required). It would be great to have a box-set of DVD’s to pop in with associated modules to help me accomplish training (although it would have to be inexpensive). I have one maintenance employee who handles the airfield. He has been here eight years. He’ll be here for another 17–20 years. I really don’t have a maintenance training program. He’s gained the knowledge over the years. The general education level of applicants—these are not high paying jobs, consequently, they do not draw the sharpest candidates. Even at large air carrier airports, there are challenges as stated by one of the respondents: Some of our biggest challenges include finding opportunities to train with the limited staff and the need to continue regular oper- ations, keeping motivation high for a continuous learning atmo- sphere, enforcing and ensuring that all contractors are trained and meet our expectations of safety on the airfield, and provid- ing effective methods and tailoring them to staff (many of our maintenance staff are not suited for reading a 50-page document and learning through reading alone). Many are visual learners and need the learning document broken down into bullet points or a short Power Point presentation, or even the use of real-life examples to understand better. We utilize our own Supervisors to help differentiate instruction amongst staff—yes, they are both Supervisors and teachers. We also see a challenge with keeping material interesting and maintaining the motivation to learn. As such, we utilize front-line personnel to help conduct the train- ing. They use real-life situations and examples to help get points across and improve retention. Airports that are Part 139-certified are required under Sec- tion 139.303 to provide certain training to personnel having access to the movement areas of the airport, as well as to those engaged in aircraft rescue and firefighting (ARFF) duties. At one GA airport, the maintenance personnel were cross-trained in ARFF. This requirement poses a significant challenge, as any new maintenance employee would need to undergo exten- sive training to qualify as an ARFF responder. At the oppo- site extreme, one non-hub airport operated by a municipality depends on structural firefighters from the city. Because of departmental policies, the approximately 100 structural fire- fighters rotated between stations within the city and at any specific time could respond to the airport. In this case, all 100 firefighters required training on airport operations. Hiring a new firefighter would require training him/her in airport oper- ations as well, placing a strain on training capability. Direct quotes from several of the survey respondents under- score the degree to which budget and staffing impacts the train- ing of new maintenance hires. An open-ended survey question (Q38) asked what challenges, other than budget, managers face in providing training to their new hires or non-airport employ- ees. The responses were simple and mostly focused on the availability of time for training or the inadequate staffing levels: • Allocating staff time • Timing of training and employee absence during training • Time constraints • Insufficient or untrained staff to cover for employees who are away • No system or no staff with training experience • Time, evaluation and selection of training materials, competent trainers • Time to perform training the way you would want the employee to learn. Hands-on training can be an issue owing to time constraints. • Really just freeing up the schedules of those members of staff qualified to give training • No extra person to be a designated training professional • Time to have instruction given by existing employee/ ride-alongs • Time to give to training from qualified individual chapter two TRAINING CHALLENGES

11 • Time and qualified instructors • Time to devote to training and oversight of initial time in field • WORKLOADS • Time • Availability of staff to do the training • Language/time/training • Scheduling. One airport manager in particular summarized it bluntly: In my past 20-plus years of airport management at general aviation airports in the western U.S.A., the practice of legacy training for any staffers has evaporated. This is very unfortu- nate and has in part contributed to a dumbing-down of much of the available pool of work force. It has also enhanced an envi- ronment where mistakes are more common than they should be. Local political expediency builds on this trend, contribut- ing to employees moving from job to job and problems mul- tiplying in scope and size. This doesn’t benefit the industry or local system. Another airport manager offered his perspective as a solu- tion. This manager believed in having one person conduct all the training as part of his/her supervisory job duties. However, CASE EXAMPLE 1: The Alaskan Challenge The Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) owns 253 rural airports in the State of Alaska. A rural airport in this case is any airport other than the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and the Fairbanks International Airport. There are a number of other commer- cial service airports that are operated by municipalities or spe- cial districts, such as Juneau and Ketchikan, but for general aviation access outside of those main cities, it is a rural airport that supports the community. They are indeed the lifeblood of the community, because 82% of Alaskan communities have no road access. This creates a number of challenges for the Division of Statewide Aviation, the organization that is responsible for the development, construction, operation, and management of those rural public airports. Divided into three regions—Southeast, Central, and Northern—the Central and Northern regions are where most of the rural airports are located. Often they are not much more than gravel strips, but they must be maintained because they are the primary means of transportation access and survival for the community. Several of the larger com- munities in the various regions are certified under 14 CFR Part 139 and must be maintained to those standards. So, where do state officials acquire individuals with knowl- edge of airport maintenance and operations in such remote areas? For the most part, they don’t. As one individual pointed out in an interview, “We find it easier to hire highway road graders and make them airport managers than to try to recruit aviation managers.” There is a protocol the regional managers go through to post and advertise airport positions, but more often than not, the position is opened to the rural commu- nity for applicants. The local communities do not have the resources to maintain the local roads, much less the airports, so the state takes on the responsibilities instead. Because a rural GA airport doesn’t have high levels of activity compared to the local roads, maintenance workers are hired primarily as road graders first, then are given additional duties to maintain the airport. Most maintenance workers assigned to the air- port have no previous knowledge of airport standards, design, maintenance, or operations. The Division of Aviation tries to overcome these hurdles primarily through on-the-job training conducted by the regional managers, who spend several days with the new hires to prepare them. It also holds training sessions sev- eral times a year, usually in Anchorage, bringing in out- side training providers to teach the courses. The agency also sends employees from the outlying airports to the training sessions to learn about operations and maintenance at a cost that includes registration, air travel, food, and lodging. Because of reduced staffing at the rural airports, the travel absence of the employees has to be scheduled for non- critical times. The state does contract with an outside train- ing provider to deliver a variety of subject matter over the web, but the remoteness of some of the airports make Inter- net connections unreliable, and the topics often do not address the conditions found at rural airports in Alaska. Lately, the Division has been working to develop its own training material in DVD format for distribution to the rural airports in order to better address and prepare new employees and local supervisors. the respondent identifies a drawback to relying on one indi- vidual, as often is the case in small organizations: I believe in the concept of unity of command, which dictates an employee report to only one supervisor. I believe this is especially true when it comes to training, especially when training relates to the regulatory perspective of airports. I have found that hav- ing more than one person involved in the training process often leads to conflicting perspectives. Although actual job duties (i.e., vehicle operations, snow removal procedures, etc.) can be effi- ciently and effectively performed in different manners, I believe it is beneficial to the organization, and the new hire individual, to learn the operation from a single source and eventually work out their own method of performing the task rather than having multiple sources of instruction providing various pieces of infor- mation. The only issue we have with the unity of command con- cept is that we only have 1 dedicated training coordinator. If this individual is on vacation or out sick, then at times we have to side step the unity of command philosophy rather than having the new individual sit idle waiting for the training coordinator’s return. This airport has an organization that allows for a person to take on the role of training coordinator. As will be pointed out in a later section, much of the training at small GA airports rests with an airport manager who either is not prepared to conduct training or who has little time to do so. The state of Alaska faces some unique challenges as illustrated by the case example.