Maintenance Documentation and Human Factors
Maintenance documentation and human factors
This domain tests how maintenance is planned, recorded, and protected from human error. Documentation includes maintenance manuals, illustrated parts catalogues (IPCs), structural repair manuals, service bulletins, airworthiness directives, work cards, logbooks, defect reports, and maintenance releases. Human factors covers the conditions that make error more likely and the defences that prevent it.
Core rules
- Use the current, approved documentation for the specific aircraft, engine, or component. Check effectivity by serial number and configuration; a manual revision may not apply to every aircraft.
- Work cards and task cards must be signed at the step performed. Sign-off means the task was completed and inspected as required, not that it was probably done.
- Revision control matters: superseded pages must be removed, and temporary revisions must be tracked. Unapproved data, handwritten amendments, and uncontrolled photocopies are not acceptable.
- The Dirty Dozen includes fatigue, complacency, pressure, distraction, lack of communication, lack of resources, lack of assertiveness, lack of teamwork, lack of knowledge, norms, stress, and awareness. Use the SHELL model to consider software, hardware, environment, and liveware.
- Shift handover must be structured: outstanding work, defects, parts, test status, and safety-critical items. A verbal handover alone is weak; record it.
- Error management uses checks, duplicate inspections, independent verification, and reporting. Reporting is for learning and correction, not blame.
Worked example
A technician fits a replacement fuel pump from the IPC. The IPC shows two part numbers for different serial ranges. The technician checks the aircraft serial number and the effectivity note, confirms the correct pump, and records the part number and serial number on the work card. During handover, the technician tells the next shift that the pump is fitted but the system has not been leak-tested. The next shift completes the leak test, signs the step, and only then issues the maintenance release. The trap is fitting the higher-volume pump because it is the same shape; effectivity and approval are what matter.
Traps
Using a manual revision without checking effectivity; pre-signing work cards; relying on memory at handover; and treating a human factors report as an admission of blame.