Cloud-based Solution Eases Manual-management Headaches

When aircraft operators complain about regulatory burdens, the requirement to keep manuals up to date commonly springs to mind. Manuals covering operations, maintenance, safety and security all have to be kept current. Technically, an operator is in breach of its air operator certificate if even one seemingly minor update is not incorporated in a manual. By extension, this can invalidate its insurance and leave it exposed to liability.

Specialist software is easing the burden, and this has been the primary mission of Web Manuals since the Swedish company was founded in 2002. Crucially, its software is not intended just to support a static database, but also allows the manuals to be constantly updated.

The latest Web Manuals 6.1 Super Gripen update introduced in late January improves on the software’s document digitization application and makes it easier to write, review, publish, distribute and control all the documents in an operator’s library of manuals. The update introduces a more powerful search engine, a diagram editor for creating process and organization charts, a new engine for producing PDFs and improved tools for managing advanced data tables. Users of the Web Manuals Reader interface can now add change requests that are integrated with the editing task flow.

Web Manuals has also improved one of the system’s key features by enhancing the indicators and alerts that users get when they need to incorporate an update driven by a change introduced by regulators. The Web Manuals Compliance Libraries feature automatically compares a company’s manuals with the most current version of the requisite regulations and standards issued by authorities such as the FAA and EASA, as well as best practice requirements from bodies such as IATA, IBAC and audit providers like Argus and Wyvern.

This feature relies partly on collaboration with Switzerland-based compliance expert AeroEx, which monitors regulatory databases to identify changes in the implementing rules. The Web Manuals application informs those responsible for maintaining operators’ manuals that they need to edit and update text in specific parts of a document.

“Sometimes, for example, the EASA might make changes to regulations that it doesn’t even indicate,” explained Web Manuals founder Martin Lidgard. “Our system will notify customers if a regulation relevant to them has been changed. There are something like 7,000 requirements for AOC holders, and if they are missing even one item they are not valid. That’s a massive risk.”

Web Manuals is a Cloud-based system developed in HTML format and, according to Lidgard, this makes it more suitable for small and medium-size operators that might struggle to adapt to potentially more complex XTL-formatted software that has to be updated. “The XML format is good for the sort of complicated documents that OEMs have to prepare and manage, but most smaller operators are happy to stick to the documents that OEMs provide. They are more concerned with the management of manuals, and for that, XML is too much of a burden.”

Users pay monthly fees of €100 ($107) for each person who needs editing rights to manuals, and €6 ($6.42) for each person who simply needs to reference the manuals. Pilots can access manuals on mobile devices when offline, although they need to synchronize changes when online.

Improved Collaboration

Typically it would be an operator’s compliance manager who has to stay on top of required changes to manuals, but some aspects, such as flight- and duty-time limitations for aircrew, are handled by other managers within the organization. This is where the improvements to the collaboration features in Web Manuals version 6.1 are of particular value, because they make it easier for multiple colleagues to work in a document at the same time with each fully aware of what the others are doing.

“The system lets you know when someone is working on a document and the revision control feature kicks in to show where changes have been made,” Lidgard told AIN. “You can add a comment to explain why you’ve made the change, and a change log shows the changes word-by-word. There is also a change request feature so that, for example, a pilot could request something. A change icon shows you exactly where any changes have been made.”

Eighty operators worldwide are using the Web Manuals system. One of these is California-based operator ACI Jet, which says that the system has greatly simplified the process of maintaining manuals to support its 12-strong fleet.

“We had 3,000 pages [of manuals],” explained ACI flight operations vice president Kellee Valentine. “Having suffered the frustrations of using Microsoft Word, converting documents to PDF format, then compiling them all, we knew we needed something better….We’re a small company, so everyone wears a lot of different hats. Nobody has a lot of time to sit around and play with manual formatting and most of our time was dedicated to fixing formats, headers and footers, ensuring revision numbers were changed and so on.”

ACI considered using Adobe’s Frame Maker program, but the ability to make revisions in far less time was a big factor in opting for Web Manuals. “Typically, it took a full eight hours with three people working on it to accomplish a revision change,” said Valentine. “Now a revision takes about three hours—if it’s a big one—and I can do it myself. So we’ve gone from 24 man hours to three.”

According to Valentine, it took the company four weeks to adopt Web Manuals, and he praised the developer for its willingness to adapt the system in response to suggestions. He highlighted the improvement to the compliance process as a particular benefit of the new system, explaining, “If an FAA inspector comes in and says, ‘How do you comply with x?’ we simply open the compliance library, and it links to all the references in our manual for the given regulation.”