Pretty needlessly antagonistic there from a purported senior leader. āIf you have the courageā?
Though I suppose the only good thing about still being attached to the RAF means that any leadership will only be in place for a few years.
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Seems to be quite evident that it doesnāt just affect @Baldrick so not exactly great just debriefing him on the decision!
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These are perfect. Thank you!
Genuinely disappointed that you arenāt up for the conversation. SM is such a poor way of getting messages acrossā¦hence the Town Halls which will continue TFN at my direction.
Enjoy the SCC but still here for a chat if you wish.
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These town halls?
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It think what we have are two circles on the Venn diagram not intersecting.
This is a little concerning as one of those circles is the āSafe System of Trainingā
Those involved in higher AT & certainly those in the shooting world should be familiar with it should be applying.
Itās simple to get your head round straight forward to apply.
I have just had a look on bader learn & SSofT isnāt mentioned in the Health & safety packages. Happy to be corrected if it is there.
Iāve then looked at the past car parking events my Sqn has been invited to particularly the Risk assessments. Theyāreā¦.okay in a RA way but a bit wishy washy. & it is certainly not easy to make out that it covers the SSofT.
So on one hand we have a system of applying a safety model for activities and on the other a completely different system of assessing & managing risk.
Iām a shooting bod so have always applied it since I joined over 15 years ago. As OC I apply it to all my SMS events in the form of a comment & get my staff to do the same to evidence it is in place.
Iāve also nicked the police NDM so when making decisions or planning they are bearing it in mind when doing dynamic risk assessments or checking things off in their heads.
The general gist I am getting from this topic is that whilst risk assessments are completed & SMS events are being approved, the SSofT is not being embedded within the activities resulting in unsafe practise which ten isnāt recognised as such hence not being reported.
Worryingly it also indicates that at Wing or region approval level, the RAs arenāt being properly looked at.
This is what is leading to the disconnect & the translation gap.
Yes other cadet forces are doing the car parking, but if they have embedded the SSofT into the activity then the functional safety is in place.
So what needs to happen?
From an organisation point of view, safe system of training needs embedding in the cultural mindset.
Easiest way is unfortunately a yearly ELearning package - but it is the simplest & most straight forward way.
Secondly a column needs to be added to the 5010c RA form listing which aspect of the SSofT the hazard is within - probably column 2 after āRefā. This will make it easier to establish that the RA is compliant with the SSOfT.
What can we do now?
If people want the ban on car parking rescinded then someone needs to write a RA assessment as well as a best practice guide that complies with the SSofT.
It should include things like maximum slope gradient, standard hand signals, supervision ratios (eg 1:5) etc
If youāve got a way of using an anonymous file server then post a link here or alternative screen shots if not too many & it can be peered review.
Parking a Car (unlike marshalling a plane) is a very common place activity to the majority of us so thereās a lot more assumed knowledge & perhaps a bit of complacency with this normalised activity.
Will this make a difference to the current policy?
Probably not in the short term but it may allow a working group to be formed that can explore options & practicalities about whether the activity is viable.
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Or, Wing and Region have been looking at the applications, and have been happy with the level of risk. Then one person separately has decided they are not happy with that level of risk.
Separately from that, you have examples of CFAVs not following their RAs.
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That could well be the case, the RA I looked at both happened to be from the same person but it was ropey & I personally wouldnāt have approved it.
In the past with other events, even though Wing has signed off on an activity, I have withdrawn my Sqn from activities where Iāve read the RA & deemed it unsafe/not sufficient or just uncomfortable with it.
So yeah sometimes the person not happy with the level of risk is at Sqn level rather than at HQ.
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Ultimately who decides the level of risk, sqn, wing, rgn, hqac, 22 grp? (Probably a rhetorical question).
Chief techs approach would at least try to close the spectrum of thoughts in a methodical manner without predetermining the outcome.
Iāve certainly raised concerns in the past too about what i perceived to be insufficient planning and risk assessments. I think we often get too focused on ticking the right boxes that RAs donāt actually assess risks very well, they just present data weāre told to present.
Chris Connelly said on my LLA training that a good RA should be no more than 1 page. Otherwise people wonāt read it and they wonāt apply it.
I certainly agree. Our RAs are now full of mandatory things weāve been told need to be in there, which almost defeats the purpose.
This sort of thing may well lead to what you see as poor RAs. Pages of detail about climatic injuries etc, but no real depth to the actual specific risks associated with that specific activity.
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The climatic injury one annoys me as itās a classic example of what you describe as weāve told to use one thatās just a copy & paste of the guide into a 5010c format.
No thinking or application - purely ticking a box.
The person who decides appears to be the person with the lowest risk appitite at any level.
On @Chief_Techās example, that might be them deciding a Wing activity is too risky. In the car parking example, thats 22 gp deciding itās too risky.
These issues may well be present in this case, but at no point has anyone involved in the decision making process fed that back.
Echoing some of the frustrations above, there hasnāt been any communication on what options were considered to make this activity acceptable (aside from the CACās email in a recent FOI request). It might be that a culture shift is needed, but no one has said that. We canāt make changes if thereās no feedback.
I wonder if the Safe System of Training was really designed to be implemented at the level we operate at? This is a wider discussion but my (limited) understanding was that it was brought in after a review of serious service incidents resulting in fatalities. As offspring of the parent service weāve then had it applied to us but has anyone looked at whether it is actually appropriate for our activities?
Iām not saying the principles are wrong, or that there is a better way of doing it, but is it a military approach to a non-military arena?
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I see how you think that in this situation, so moving onwards should there be a clear line of delegation and risk awareness.
Acto 10 was an early attempt to achieve this but seems it either hasnt been reviewed or brought in line with current guidelines.
Maybe Chiefs Techs methodology would form a basis of initial evaluation so it could be āsoldā to the ultmate duty holder so could be either authorised or teeaked accordingly.
Ultimate if the risk is ALARP but the bosses feel the output (fundraising and community relations) could be achieved in other ways then the answer may still be no regardlees, just thought.
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I do agree with this, but not being given the chance to apply control measures is the problem here.
I think what @Cab has seen (cadets walking directly in front of cars whilst directing them) is very dangerous. But that doesnāt make the whole premise of car parking dangerous. Thatās the real point Iām trying to get across here. If I was running a car parking events and saw that happening, there would be some verbal retraining going on. Reminding them not to do that etc.
I think the problem here doesnāt lie with the risk of car parking, it is a fundamental lack of wider risk management. Car parking is just what has been seen in this case. There are plenty of other examples where our TSA has seen things going on that are potentially dangerous. But thereās been no stop order. A good email with lessons learned and what we can do better.
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Also, all this talk of Safe System of Training, isnāt that specifically applied to shooting and fieldcraft only, per policy. Itās not actually a āthingā for every other activity. Certainly I used to think the opposite but @dazizian mentioned it before that really, itās designed to work with shooting and fieldcraft. Just useful elsewhere as a guide.
I agree, as an organisation we implement the SST too rigidly in areas where it is not intended, primarily due to a lack of service support, money and real understanding of the principles of the SST/W.
It is used by some as a hand rail to risk assessment which is okay. It is used by others as a rigidly defined framework that we must adhere to in order to do anything, thatās not really appropriate for a lot of what we do.
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I believe it was the Kaylee Macintosh incident that caused SSoT to be properly reviewed & implemented. I believe one of the issues is that the cadets were wearing adult buoyancy aid rather than child ones resulting in the cadet being trapped under the boat.
You then had ātotal safetyā kick in after the nimrod crash which ended up being directed at us.
We might need someone NeBosh qualified to chime in. 
Iā¦disagree with this but I can see where you are coming from as anything too rigidly applied often misses the point & it should still have an essence of reasonably practicable.
The SSoT is a good simple mind set that anyone get their head around & is a straight forward was of applying it to Risk assessment & activity planning.
It does form part of the safe system of work within the MoD so really we should be applying it.
It prompts the necessary questions :-
Have you got the right people; have you got the right equipment; are you doing it in the right place; are you doing it in the right way;
I donāt see how ignoring this useful tool makes us more safer.
If itās dangerous to apply it, then yep donāt use it but I donāt see why you wouldnāt unless itās a demarcation thing that only those doing āmilitaryā stuff should use it as itās ānot for civviesā
It took us ages to update to the new 5010c way of risk assessment so the reluctance to use SSoT maybe another example of the cultural inertia that is ingrained in RAFAC.
However if the SSoT is what gives the chain of command the confidence that we are safe as itās what they understand, then even if was originally intend for another area thatās what we got to apply & use.