Re: Beancounter Battles
Anthony Sasso (Anthony.Sasso_at_nwa.com)
Thu, 08 May 1997 14:50:52 -0700
Neil C. Krey wrote:
>
> Good Afternoon, CRMers!
>
> Key, your suggestions are good ones. I had the opportunity to chase after
> this same topic about three years back and came up with another one. Dr.
> Bob Alkov, who was then with the U.S. Naval Safety Center, did a study on
> incident rates for U.S. Navy helicopter operations before/after CRM
> training . They showed a significant improvement. I have the paper in my
> file and will dig it out. Also, I'll see if Bob will give me permission to
> post it on our web site so everyone can access it.
>
> My recollection as I looked for statistics was that there was a lot of
> anecdotal evidence of improvement, but relatively little in the relm of
> hard data. At least from the U.S. perspective, there are now so few
> accidents that we have trouble drawing much in the way of conclusions from
> any of them. They all tend to be the result of interactions between many
> factors, including human performance, so confirming changes due to a single
> intervention could prove difficult.
>
> Anyone else have sources to add?
>
> Best regards,
> Neil Krey
> neilkrey_at_why.net
> http://users.why.net/neilkrey/
I don't have a source to add, but rather a comment. It is very easy to
pinpoint an accident and say it was caused by Human Factors, after the
impending investigation. It is my humble opinion that there are loads of
CRM "Saves" out there that go unreported. Unfortunately, we don't hear
about these "Saves" as much as we hear about the errors. For
justification of CRM training, just add up the costs of only 1 accident,
in terms of loss of life, lost revenue, insurance, marketing reputation,
training, airframe, etc. Perhaps someone can compute a dollar figure of
what a hypothetical "accident" would cost these days. It seems clearly
obvious to all of us on the web that CRM training (or CLR, for the United
folks) is a sound investment. The trick is to convince the beancounters
of the same thing. Anybody have the book answer? I'm waiting with open
ears!
Regards,
Tony Sasso
Northwest Airlines