Norm's curriculum for training people to develop scenarios sounds very
interesting. I am not aware of any other equivalent that specifically
focuses on teaching individuals to develop LOS. Nice job! The FAA
Advisory Circular provides some LOS development parameters, however,
learning in a seminar like you have developed would be far more effective
than simply picking up a manual and trying to figure it out on your own.
The missing element in the "read the Advisory Circular then design a
program" approach is the lack of feedback to the developer. Norms program
appears to give designers feedback on the quality of their design work.
When I started designing LOS at Delta I started with at step 1 similiar to
Norms:
"1) The human factor focus (we concentrate on two per LOFT eg.
Communication process and decision -making)."
When I reviewed the data and incident/accident reports it became obvious
that most of these data and reports were described in terms of the error
made and the conditions (links in the chain) that led to the error. As I
reviewed the existing design philosophy I concluded that even pilots highly
skilled in CRM can fall into traps so I needed to design scenarios that: 1.
Built skill and, 2. Exposed the known traps. I concluded that the human
factors focus of the LOS session should include 1. Specific CRM skill
development and 2. Exposure to known error producing conditions. I
modified my step 1 to:
"1) The human factor focus: Two CRM skill areas and one or two known error
producing condition(s)"
One challenge that I immediately encountered, however, was that neither AQP
or the Advisory Circular had developed a mechanism for cataloging and
tracking the "known error producing conditions (human performance traps,
known links in the error chain, etc)". This deficit still exists.
The addition of the error producing conditions to scenario development ISD
provides a great opportunity for LOS developers to coordinate with the
Safety folks and the Standards folks. As the industry gets more saavy at
obtaining and using safety data, there will need to be a place within
training to plug these findings in to improve known deficits. The LOS
design provides and outstanding opportunity for managers to incoporate
safety and standards human performance lessons learned.
Best Regards,
Vince Mancuso