The CAMO or Continued Airworthiness Management Organisation is a key and pivotal part of airline safety and managing risk / change forms the heart of this.
The CAMO is tasked with a lot of responsibility regarding ensuring that aircraft are airworthy in their operation concerning all known tasks, defects, and concerns. Of course, we cannot govern the unknown, such as environmental factors or accidental damage – but we can ensure that an aircraft is maintained and operates within its intended scope.
There are many parts of a CAMO and one of these is the capability to realise and appreciate how change and the management of change is important. We can use risk assessments to consider and mitigate negative impacts we identify for any given changes we make.
How might you consider the flow of information when regarding risk? As an example, we can consider the following points:
Identify the topic (hazard).
Determine your risks from the tasks carried out.
Evaluate the risks and decide on control measures.
Record your findings and implement them.
Review your assessment and update, as necessary.
One of the hardest points to realise is how we grade or place a number on a particular risk; this comes from careful consideration. What are the questions we ask about a risk and how do the answers to this translate into numbers?
We can use matrix systems to determine risk and calculate a value for this risk, such a consideration is essentially based on probability and consequence.
As with anything we start with basic questions and work form these – possibility – can something happen, probability – how likely it is to happen, consequence(s) – what occurs if it happens.
The ultimate risk for the CAMO is to release a non-airworthy aircraft and it is always this which we look to ensure we mitigate from occurring.
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