Quality Assurance Program

A successful quality assurance program is the result of an effective quality control system. The purpose of a quality assurance program is to establish confidence or certainty in abilities to maintain regulatory compliance and safety in operations. When operating with a healthy quality assurance program, there should not be any unknown findings associated with audits or inspections. Without a quality control system in place, quality assurance, or certainty of operational control, is achieved by random chance only. 

Assurance is the process of analyzing and using it to assess operational processes and records. Assurance is verifying is records and reports are as per SMS principles. Assurance also confirms whether the SMS records are accurate. Assurance is the task of assessing processes, operations, services, and reliability. The main aim of assurance is to check the accuracy of reports. It also assures the accountable executive, tenants, airport users, and stakeholders that there is no misrepresentation done in records, no misuse of funds, no fraud, and no fraudulent activities done in a company or done by the company. Assurance is applied to assess the process, the procedure, and operations, and these processes, procedures, and systems are observed closely to ensure the process is right and gives optimum results. Assurance specializes in assessing and improving the quality of the information in a company. Assurance is a tool that helps in the decision-making process as it works on customer feedback, airport and airline personnel feedback, feedback from the general public, or other areas where information is required in organizational decision-making.

Quality assurance is about overseeing SMS processes as well as the final task to ensure that operators are in compliance with regulatory requirements, standards and their SMS policy. Quality assurance firstly requires operators to implement their quality management system (QMS) and then involve audits or periodic inspections of the system. Quality assurance hence means ensuring whether the QMS is operating as expected i.e., helping to govern processes and output. With quality assurance methods, operators generate key insights of their processes and identify any nonconformity. When operating with a daily quality control system, findings are discovered prior to audit and inspections. There are no good reasons for audit findings. 

Safety management is different than safety assurance since it is about risk exposure or vulnerabilities in airport or airline operations. Risks are hazards defined by exposure, likelihood and severity that can affect operations both tangibly and intangibly such as workplace injuries, defective products, fire, loss in revenues, market volatility, and negative publicity. Safety assurance is about internal and external exposures to identify the areas that are exposed to hazards. Safety assurance methods include performing risk assessments, risk analysis, system analysis, root cause analysis, corrective actions, or preventive actions. 

Over a period of three years, all regulatory non-compliance findings for airports were of their obligations as airport operators, and of their quality assurance programs. Regulatory non-compliance findings were given to small, medium, and large international airports. There are no good reasons for airports, or airlines, to work with processes that generates findings. It is just as simple and easy to do things right as it is to do it the wrong way. 

A quality assurance program is a component and integral part of a safety management system (SMS), and is managed by the SMS manager, in the same manner as the other components of an SMS is managed by the SMS manager. A safety management system must include a safety policy, a goalsetting process and to measure the attainment of their goals, hazard identification process and manage associated risks, training processes, reporting processes, a quality assurance program, review and audit processes, and any other requirements prescribed by the regulations. Without a quality assurance program, an SMS is incomplete since there is a lack of quality control. A safety management system is a businesslike approach to safety. In a successful business, cashflow quality control is achieved by cash register entries. Quality assurance of a business is to conduct review and audits to learn about cash register reliability, and compliance with regulatory accounting principles. Quality assurance of a safety management system is to conduct review and audits to learn about data entry reliability and learn to what level their processes conform to regulatory requirements. An example of compliance level could be a safety policy that the accountable executive has approved but not communicated to all personnel. 

The quality assurance program includes a process for quality assurance that includes periodic audits of activities and audits, for cause of those activities. The certificate holder (CH) is responsible for records relating to the findings resulting from the quality assurance program are distributed to appropriate manager for corrective action and follow-up. It is important to note that corrective actions from audits and follow-up are assigned to operational managers, and not to the SMS manager. A complete audit is due within 12 months after a certificate is issued, and audits of the entire quality assurance program carried out every three years, calculated from the initial audit. 

Conventional wisdom is that an audit of the entire quality assurance program (QAP) is an audit of the audit itself. When the regulations call for an audit of the entire quality assurance program, they are calling for an audit of the airport’s quality assurance program, which is how airport personnel do their work to ensure quality delivery of services. Quality assurance includes the prerequisite of a daily quality control system. An audit of the entire QAP is therefore an audit of regulatory compliance, standard compliance, SMS policy compliance, process compliance, and safety in operations compliance within all areas of airport operations and their third-party contractors. In other words, the quality assurance program to be audited is quality assurance of how the work is done day in and day out, as opposed to how work is expected to be done. If a quality assurance program is implemented to find faults based on arbitrary expectations, then the quality assurance of actual work done is eliminated. A quality assurance program is not separated from operations but is the operations itself. On the other hand, an audit conducted by an external auditor is designed to find faults based on expectations, since a third-party, or external auditor only knows the expectations and does not know random work practices.

 

A quality assurance program requires audit checklists to be used. A simplified audit checklist has three options, which are Yes, No, or N/A, and a field for comments. Airport audits are of all activities controlled by an airport operations manual (AOM). Areas controlled of an AOM are the standards to be met and the services to be provided by an airport operator. Standards to be met are airport standards compliance for issuance, and maintenance of the airport certificate. Services to be met are services by the airport operator to maintain regulatory compliance, and additional services required for airport operations, such as aircraft parking, fuel service, apron for boarding and deplaning passengers and other services required for an airport to provide customer service. 

There are no requirements for a certificate holder to appoint a quality assurance manager. However, several SMS enterprises are assigning the quality assurance portfolio to a responsible manager. A safety management system is under the control of an accountable executive. With the lines of authority established, the certificate holder has a tool to navigate their quality assurance program. An AE is responsible for meeting the requirements of the regulations, while the liability rests with the certificate holder. 

An operational daily quality control system is applied for successful navigation of the quality assurance program. The quality control system is a daily rundown of tasks and activities, and where these activities are linked to regulatory requirements, standard requirements, or SMS policy statements. 

Operating with a quality assurance program is a simple task since it does not change any of the work practices or processes. The quality assurance program required includes a process for quality assurance that includes periodic reviews or audits of the activities authorized under a certificate and reviews or audits, for cause, of those activities. For a quality assurance to be effective it is monitoring operations to review patterns and for tasks and activities to remain within their assigned paths. A daily rundown within a quality assurance program assigns multiple regulatory links to one task. One example is the daily inspection at airports. Not only are several of the obligations of an airport operator taken care of, but any findings during the inspection are automatically populated into a hazard register. By applying this principle, a finding, which normally is negative to operations, is turned around to a positive event by adding it to the hazard register and comply with an SMS requirement. SMS is not about the negatives, but about the positive, and discover why things goes right and to discover positive events from findings. Conducting change management, safety cases, and system analyses are all components of a healthy quality assurance program. By conducting these tasks an SMS enterprise comply with their regulatory SMS requirement to operate with a safety management system that includes a quality assurance program. As their daily rundown system is populated with tasks, activates and work practices, they establish their tailored quality assurance system. 

A successful quality assurance program happily welcomes the required triennial audits since a daily quality control system maintain regulatory compliance and safety in operations.    
 


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