Applies ISO-9000 Principles To Aero-Businesses
Baldwin Aviation Inc.
(BAI), a service company founded in 2004 to assist flight
departments in meeting regulatory requirements and establishing
safety-oriented operating standards, has become the first firm of
its kind to achieve the International Standard for Business
Aviation Operations (IS-BAO) Registration. BAI received the
certification last month, after more than two years of program and
software development.
Introduced in 2002, IS-BAO is a code of best practices designed
to help flight departments worldwide achieve a high level of safety
and professionalism. It essentially uses the ISO 9000 principles
structured to apply to aviation safety, offering a flexible
approach which allows flight operations to define and customize
their own solutions to meet industry-wide criteria for safety and
compliance.
Balwin Aviation president Don Baldwin tells ANN that what BAI
has already accomplished will cut the time and expense of
qualifying for IS-BAO Registration for subscribers to its full
service Safety Management, Standards and Shared Resource
program.
"IS-BAO compliance involves the creation of a significant amount
of materials, as well as documentation and continual assessment.
Recreating all of the manuals, accessing the library of regulations
and maintaining accurate records would be an extraordinary
undertaking for an individual flight department, but we’ve
already done virtually all of that ground work,"
said Baldwin.
"This means our clients are able to focus on tweaking our
program to their specific operations. They can concentrate on doing
the things necessary to improve safety as soon as they engage our
services. We literally bring with us a collection of manuals, forms
and documentation tools—and the knowledge of how to use
them—that allow our clients to reduce the time they need to
qualify for IS-BAO registration from 12 to 18 months down to
approximately 3 to 4 months."
Baldwin noted IS-BAO Registration isn't an end in itself,
either.
"For approximately 30% of the cost our clients would incur to
comply on a one-time basis, we’re offering them the benefits
of a long term relationship that will provide the resources and
expertise they need to prepare, initially, for an independent audit
and IS-BAO registration -- and then do what’s necessary to
help them sustain that status indefinitely," he said.
Baldwin, who managed multi-national flight operations at both
Texaco and Coca Cola during his career in aviation management, told
ANN those roles actually contributed to his understanding and
identification with small flight departments.
"At Texaco, we operated
a large, multi-national flight department, but it included five
satellite bases. A lot of the business concepts and insights we
bring to our current relationships were developed there to support
their smaller flight operations," he said. "At Coke, we were among
the first flight operations in the world to qualify for IS-BAO
registration, so we learned a great deal about what resources are
essential to ensure safe operations, with continuity and
consistency, in the face of inevitable changes in people and
priorities."
"The shared services BAI provides are designed specifically to
give our subscribers access to those resources without having to
create them from scratch themselves," Baldwin noted.