Story ID: 111
Online Audits Offer Pandemic-era Solution
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: When the coronavirus pandemic shut down most travel, business aviation safety experts had to figure out a new way to conduct audits.
Word Count: 1006
Well before the coronavirus pandemic upended the aviation industry, Rick Malczynski had been scheduled to perform an audit of the McDonald’s flight department. As founder and president of auditing firm Business Aviation Safety Consortium (BASC), Malczynski had planned to travel to the flight department in Illinois to perform the audit, which usually takes a day and a half.

However, the nearly nationwide lockdowns that ensued during the pandemic forced Malczynski to come up with a different way to conduct the audit, and it turned out that an online process worked just as well, if not better. Other companies have latched onto this idea, for example, Greenwich AeroGroup’s Professional Aviation Associates, which had a remote audit for its ISO 9001:2015, AS9120B quality management system certificate. After completing its first virtual IS-BAO audits in March, the International Business Aviation Council has scheduled many more.

Once the McDonald’s team decided to work with BASC on a remote audit, it was simply a matter of preparing for the audit as normal, then testing the video conferencing procedures that would be used during the audit before the actual event.

Not all operations are as well prepared as the McDonald’s flight department, and that went a long way towards a smooth audit process. “They were so well prepared,” Malczynski said.

The audit was BASC’s ICAO Annex 6 Part II operational compliance and Chapter 19 safety management system (SMS) evaluation.

During the audit Malczynski would ask McDonald’s captain and safety manager Brandon Vondrak and his safety team to show anything necessary via video. The other safety team members are flight attendant Lisa Weissinger and Jim Dvorak, senior maintenance technician. All participants used GoToMeeting software to conduct the audit.

As with an in-person audit, the McDonald’s audit began with a facility tour. The audit itself hews to the ICAO standards, and the safety team had already filled out a checklist for the audit and sent it to BASC. “We go over it,” said Malczynski. “Then we do whatever it takes until we’re both 100 percent sure where we want to be at. We go right to the source documents, the ICAO publication and the Annex, so there’s no disagreement.”

Malczynski’s philosophy for audits is to work together to help improve the client’s operation. Sometimes clients put their “shields up” at audit time, he said. “We become a partner with them.” If a client has a problem with a particular aspect of the audit, he prefers they ask for help, and BASC will assist with the necessary improvements.

“We can help them figure it out,” he said. “We love to talk about what’s reasonable to expect them to do. It’s a little tough to take it right from the Annex. [Clients] like common sense and reasonableness.”

Although the face-to-face touch is missing in remote audits, Malczynski doesn’t feel this held him back. “It was the same as in-person,” he said, “and we didn’t need to sacrifice covering anything.” He is well aware that sometimes during an in-person audit, he can pick up on non-verbal cues and figure out that he needs to talk to an employee privately, or he might observe a messy hangar, which might make him follow up more closely in other aspects of the audit. “It would be tough for someone who needed help [to get my attention],” he admitted. “There is that human contact we need.”

But working with a professional flight department like the McDonald’s operation made up for the lack of in-person interaction. “They have a really professional cabin crew,” Malczynski said, “and they’re super involved in every aspect of the operation.” The entire flight department “really embraced” the virtual audit, he said. And in any case, he can ask the on-site person to show him whatever he needs to see, so there is no hiding the messy part of the hangar or dodgy documents.

The audit was segmented into different sections, and various flight department personnel participated in each segment, from three to 11 people video conferencing over GoToMeeting. Malczynski hosted the meeting but passed the controls to the person at the flight department to show him what he needed to see. Some of the records reside in other software, which could be shared with Malczynski, and others were on paper, so Vondrak would use the camera in his iPad to show the document. “It sounds complicated but worked out great,” Malczynski said.

Getting the flight department leadership to buy into a remote audit was not a problem, according to Vondrak. “That was an immediate yes from the chief pilot and director,” he noted. “They thought it was a great idea.”

The audit process was “just as good” as an in-person audit, he said. “It was focused, with a lot more attention to detail.” There were no issues with employees feeling free to speak to Malczynski and bring up any issues, he added.

During the pandemic slowdown, the McDonald’s flight department, like many others, cut the amount of flying way back, with an occasional day trip plus proficiency flying. The audit gave the flight department personnel something to focus on. “Afterward they seemed real excited about the changes that were going to be made and the ideas that were brought up,” Vondrak said. “We’re already starting to implement some of them because we have time to do it and it’s fresh in our minds.

“I’m a big fan of BASC,” he said, “because it’s getting back to the basics. We’re not checking boxes, and it’s tailored to our operation, but still meeting the ICAO requirements.”

With regard to remote audits, Malczynski said, “This isn’t the end, this is the beginning. It’s still the same service, but we just save on travel costs.”