I had a terrific fourth grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Brunt and she called us Brunt’s Bunch. She was one of those once-in-a-lifetime teachers that made an impact and made learning fun and interesting.

It is imperative that the maintenance industry embrace the need for procedural compliance.

One day, as the school day was coming to an end, Mrs. Brunt said she had a special assignment for us to complete before we left school. She said that the assignment shouldn’t take us long to complete and to turn it in as soon as we were finished. Once we were finished, she said, we could have free time to do as we pleased for whatever time remained of the day. Since the classroom was tightly structured in those days, the offer of free time was very enticing. She handed out the assignment. We looked at it and groaned. There were 50 questions! How could we possibly complete the assignment before the bell rang or have any time left to do as we pleased?

As my classmates and I began, we felt as if we had been tricked. She had lured us into thinking we would have time left over but the questions contained such difficult things as writing out all the eight’s times tables, and writing the abc’s forward and backward in cursive. We realized it would take all the time left in the day to complete.

The questions were hard, but we started to slog through them. At some point I began to think about the assignment, Mrs. Brunt’s promise of free time, and her nonchalant comment that it shouldn’t take us long to complete. I went back to the instructions at the beginning. This is what it said, "Please read every question thoroughly before beginning." Something clicked in my mind and I raced to the last question. It said, "Please do not answer questions 1-49. Simply write your name on the front and turn the paper in." Ha! I put my name on the front and ran to give it to the teacher.

That assignment taught me several lessons. Maybe it is one of the reasons I so love aviation with all its checklists and procedures. One of the lessons I learned relates to procedural compliance. The "procedure" in that assignment was to read every question thoroughly before beginning. Not many adults, never mind fourth graders, would take the time to do that, but it saved time and effort in the long run and I have to say that fourth grade lesson has stayed with me to this day.

This month we have a feature article called "Why Good Employees Violate Procedures" (see page 20). The FAA has determined that procedural non-compliance is the number one cause of maintenance-related incidents and accidents. This is a serious problem. It has been evidenced time and time again in high profile accidents such as the Air Midwest Flight 5481 accident in Charlotte, North Carolina. That flight crashed as a result of an incorrectly rigged elevator control system. The misrigging was due, in part, to the failure of the technician to remove the floorboards during the rigging procedure as specified in the maintenance manual, thus making it impossible to visually confirm proper installation of the rig pin. Among the NTSB report conclusions was, "Both the QA inspector and the mechanic skipped steps that would have helped detect the misrig."

It is imperative that the maintenance industry and the professionals within our industry embrace the need for procedural compliance, even when it is seemingly quicker or easier to skip steps or disregard the procedure. Please read Ed Mitchell’s piece in this month’s magazine and the follow-up piece that will appear in the March issue. The acronyms he uses, PiNC and PuNC, denote variations in the types of non-compliance with PiNC being intentional, and PuNC being unintentional.

Just as we wouldn’t want our surgeon to skip steps in a complicated surgical procedure, it is logical that the flying public wouldn’t want their mechanic to skip steps in a complicated maintenance procedure. As a hands-on mechanic, set your personal standards for procedural compliance high. As a supervisor of mechanics, require procedural compliance from your charges. As a company, demand it.