IEDC college

A new school is registering ita students for a course in Diploma in Aircraft Technology. Looking at the course, it reminds me of MIAT in Sepang. Even the course name and the duration is about the same. We also know that Miat has been pursuing the policy to outsource the Diploma courses and Admal is the first to take the offer.

The Star on 28 Mar 2012 featured the college. These are some of the information I can gather from the paper. It is also accessible on the web at http://iedc.edu.my/. I thing I like, the web is nicely structured using the free resources for the images/pictures.

a. Location

Strategically located in SS2. Looking at the picture, it is well grounded with nice facilities

b. The approval type

The school is under MQA, so it is under education ministry. There is no mention about DCA approval, which I presume that it is not approved under DCA.

c. The syllabus

It does mentioned about EASA part 66. It would probably follow the syllabus in term of design but not in the implementation. MOHE requires a specific mix of theory and practical which is not in line with the requirements of EASA part 66.

ITS PROMOTION

The promotion may be causing confusion to the public. It mentioned about the linking and the partnership with industry players. What is unknown is the extend and the contents of the partnership. It may be the like of MIAT diploma where the final semester is for practical attachment like students from other engineering discipline.

Challenging Task to Produce Licensed Personnels

The traditional production of certifying personal for aircraft maintenance was from the industry itself. Workers were recruited from high school and learn the basic skills while working for the airlines. This was the situation in the early development of the airlines.

If you were the view the original ICAO document of 1944, it was talking abut personal licensing. That mean the responsibility for the safety of the aircraft lies within the personal. As the development of technology advanced, it was obvious that an individual was not in position to handle the safety issued of the aircraft. As such the responsibilities was passed to the organisation. It was the airlines that were responsible, the MRO were not created as yet.

If you can reflect back, in 1970s and 80s, there was negligible number of Training Schools that produced Licensed Aircraft Engineers. The trainings were done by the airlines and the assessment and certification was by the civil aviation authorities. The financing of the training was by the airlines. In some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, the governments were early to recognize the importance of these type of training,

With the EASA system, the role to produce the certifying maintenance personnel is on the approved training school. The role of civil aviation authority is more supervisory rather than operational. The ATO (approved training school) trains and assess the students. The DCA control the ATO. The school apply for the license from DCA or CAA. This had caused a number of issues that need to be handled by the school.

1. The school has to play two roles, the trainer as well as the examiners. The school will recruit the students, train them and examine them.

2. The school has to get it right, if the passing rate is too low, it is detrimental to the school. Can effort or even able to play the role of the examination authority, and exercise its power fairly. It has yet to be tested in the local situation.

This is still an open challenge and failure can affect the safety of the airlines.

Going International Marketing

My school is pushing to create a niche in international market. Up to-date, much time, effort and money had been spent but there is yet to receive any indication of students coming to sign in.

What can be wrong?, or is it a matter of time, that they will be coming soon?. There were some successful model, not exactly in aviation training, but in education line. You may have heard of Lim Kok Weng College, that had established itself in creative technology and had won a number of international awards.

It appears that the logical way forwards is by establish oneself as as a quality company in term of products delivery. This is easier said than done, as I had experienced organisation that produces excellent products but unable to support itself financially. I was in an airline that pride itself to have the word's best cabin crew, and is training school produces the well sought after aircraft engineers. However financially the airline had to be rescued a couple of times.

For an aviation school producing aircraft engineer, what does it take to be successful, internationally?. It would say, there are three core things that need to be done...

1. Build up product quality.

2. Market it rationally

3. Be customer focused.

The three elements will be discussed separately in the next posting

EASA 147 Examination Center

Our School is applying for the supplementary approval approval to be an exam center for the students.

The exam center is the additional approval given by the local airworthiness authority to an approved training organisation under EASA 147 to conduct the examination. Under the earlier BCAR section L, the examinations are conducted by the Surveyors and the authority like CAA controlled the quality of the licensed personnel. With EASA system, some of the function of qualifying to become a licensed engineer is handed to the approved school. The authority control the processes and monitor through audit and surveillance.

To qualify as an exam center, we have to apply to the authority, DCA , Department of Civil Aviation. There are various requirements we have to satisfy. Some of them are:

a. Suitable facilities - A suitable rooms or hall to house the examination has to be provided. The seating distance between students must be in such a way that they cannot read the neighbor's writings.

b. Questions banks - The questions banks need to meet the quality and the quantity requirements. Some of the example of quality are... the structure of the questions, the answers and the level of difficulty.

The quantity is also important. We are looking at the figure of 8 times number of question per examination. For example, for one of the module, the part 66 guideline says, the exam must have 32 questions. So our bank must have 32x8 = 256 questions.

c. The most important criteria is to have sufficient manpower to manage the process. The person need for this post is the examiner. For Malaysian, the requirement for personnel follows the CAA requirements under part 147 Document 46 V1 (147 doc46)

Marketing to Search and Rescue

Today I am at the school to welcome our potential customer, The S and R Department.

The S and R is part of the government agency responsible to provide air-lift services to the stressed citizens, such as those involved with serious accident, missing in the sea and so forth. Currently the S and R has 6 helicopter, four of which is the Augusta. They are looking for a suitable training organisation to train their team of maintenance personnel.

Being a government agency with a different core competencies, S and R is not well positioned to handle aviation matters. Their inability was shown when their students failed to complete the pilot training and the maintenance training courses. They had sent a group of youngsters to be trained as pilot for their helicopters. Unfortunately, the school closed down before they complete their license. The same same happened to their maintenance trainees, when the school decided to change the curriculum to meet the education's university's requirements.

Based on their experience, it was understandable why the management of S and R was very critical with our school. Various questions were being asked, some of which are out of normal expectation.

The need to conduct a new category of course is causing slight apprehension as the total student was in the range of 3 to 4 only. It will not be cost effective to hire new staff to start the new course B1-3.

Managing School and Trainers Capability

Capability Planning

For training organization, like an aviation school, the most important resource is the human resources.

This is because, the knowledge and skills to be delivered given to the students resides within the person, and it take a person to deliver and assess the training.

The knowledge and skills of the teaching resources are normally managed at two levels, the organizational levels and the individual levels. For bigger organizations, it may be measured at more levels to include regional and departmental.

a. Organizational Capability

This is the more important measure. If an Organization claim to be able to offer a specific program or courses, she must be in position to show her resources.

Please Indicate the name of the instructors per each of the modules and indicate the restriction if any.

Table A - Organizational Capability

Modules	Instructor 1/limitation	Instructor 2/limitation	Remarks
1.Maths
2. Physics
3. Electric
4. Electronics
5. Digital Techniques
6. Materials/ Hardware
7. Maintenance Practices
8. Basic Aerodynamics
9. Human Factors
10. Air Legislation
11A Aeroplane Systems
15. Gas Turbine Engine
17. Propeller
Technical English

Note: instructor 1= primary instructor 2=secondary trainers

Table B – Instructors Capability and Planning.

Instructors	Ready Modules (1)	Needs Preparation(2)	Future Modules(3)	Capability %(4)

Note 1- Ready modules- Preparation time less than ½ x course duration + meet requirements

Note 2 – Needs preparation - Preparation time more than ½ but less than 2 times.+ meet requirements.

Note 3 – planned for future capability.

Note 4 – capability % = hours capability/total (B1/A1) hours x2.

Managing Capability- Removed

by JOHA 6 Mar 2012

Myanmar Foundation Course - mid term review

We are coming towards the end of the 6 month program for our clients in Myanmar. The program was designed for fresh staff entering the aviation industry. It has the following elements:

- Enhancement of English language
- fundamental aviation theory
- demonstration of the basic skill.

The evaluation is done based on the instructional design model, the ADDIE model. Addie model defines the training process into 5 steps, analysis. design, develop,implement and evaluate.

The 5 steps can be further expanded into different headings...

1. Analysis
- organisational objectives - which can be problem solution of performance improvement.
- training objectives
- participants description

2. Design
- Concern about the instruction strategy, broad division of topic and storyboarding and the syllabus.

3. Develop
- involve the notes and the presentation material.

4. Delivery
- The actual classroom delivery and include facilities and equipments.

5. Evaluation
- Kirkpatrick model of measurement can be used. However for simplicity we were using only level 1 and 2. Level1 is measuring the reaction of perception and level 2 is the learning measure.

Source of Data

The following are the source of data..

-students feedback

- instructors reports

- customers feedback

- management input

Summary of the Feedback

These are the some of the findings.

1. The trainees are not the fresh graduates entering first career in aircraft maintenance. The majority have 3 to 4 years experience. These are university graduates with good result in the engineering colleges.

2. The management of the Myanmar airlines want elements of practical skills and knowledge to be the main learning objectives. Thus the course contents have to be changed to included topic to build up the basic aircraft maintenance skills.

Moving Forward

Based on the feed backs, it was decided to modify the course by deleting some of the topics and adding or modify the others. The is done by creating another course, BASE,which is added to the origin course AFC to be offered to the selected customers.