The Four Forces of Training – Part 4 - Minimising Cost
The great challenge of flight training is not to balance the four forces (there is no profit in that), but through management actions to set the two forces of “Visibility” and “Creating Excellent Pilots” to their maximum and to minimize the effects of “Cost” and “Compliance Complexity”. This will provide you with acceleration and growth in your training.
So let’s look at how we can minimize the drag of “Cost” in the training process. This won’t cover aspects such as aircraft costs, maintenance costs or even instructor hourly rates. That is another discussion. Here, I want to look at the impact of the training course and training processes themselves on your costs.
Paper: Well, let’s just name it to start with. Paper costs! It costs to print lessons. It costs to photocopy records. It costs to put paper into student files. It costs to retain archives of old files (for 7 years!). There is the cost of the paper, the folders, the staple. There is the cost for the photocopier, the toner and drum. But most significantly there is the cost of the instructor’s time or the admin staff time to manage all these paper file processes. It takes time to walk to the printer. Fix the paper jam, print the document. Find the punch and stapler. Separate the file, add the new material. Walk back to the instructor room and put the file in the right spot! At $100 per hour for a casual IFR instructor down to $20 per hour for a junior office worker, time adds up the costs rapidly. There is a solution – go totally paperless for all training lesson plans, records and resources.
More Paper: But it doesn’t stop there. Evidence must be recorded – a copy of the flight plan, the weight and balance, the quiz questions and so on. They all must get copied, walked around, punched, stapled and added to the file…where is the file? More walking around – hey Frank do you have my student’s file? “No mate, sorry. It might be in that pile over there!”. More walking more time more cost. The solution is to be fully digital. Simply log on, use your mobile device to photograph the evidence, record the details and bring up the lesson plan for the next student. Moving on, minimizing time, maximizing profit.
Still More Paper: Ahh, forgot to copy the lesson record to give to the student – you MUST give the student a copy of the lesson record if you are a Part 141 operator -141.280(1) – watch this, it is an easy Non compliance hit by CASA! Walk back to the photocopier – wait while Frank copies the record for his student, wait while…..more time, more cost, less profit.
Time: We all know that mass briefings can minimize costs. But what about the costs then for instructors to update every student file with the record of what was taught. How about a digital system that allows you to group students for a mass briefing and then make one record entry that is automatically added to each of the student cohort that attended?
Reconciliation: Every HOO has had the task of reconciling a paper file or a limited digital file at the end of a training course to confirm that every item (performance criteria and underpinning knowledge) has been both taught and assessed as competent – see 61.195 (2)(a)&(c). I’ve had to do this a few times and it’s painful and time consuming. It’s so very tempting to skimp on this (but then pay the price when the examiner refuses to do the test or when CASA asks the compliance question!). HOO time is expensive. Lose a few hours here and training costs are really dragging you backwards. You need an automated process to minimize staff time and thus free them up to go flying and make some profit.
Compliance: If you are not careful about the training courses, records and evidence and fall foul of CASA at audit – and we are all coming up to that CASA audit cycle – then costs really blow out when we need to divert key personnel into fixing up the non-compliance issues, re-writing training course or updating the manuals because details were missed with the paper based or limited digital records. Whole days and weeks get lost causing a huge drain on costs and lost productive training.
Updating: If the training courses are created in Word documents, then updating these courses also becomes very time consuming and the drag of cost in training begins a downward spiral. Look for a way to easily update courses by making one change and then having that change automatically applied to all the lesson plans and records without extra work.
Dollars – hundreds of them: Estimate the number of hours that an instructor spends operating your current training system. Include the physical costs of paper, toner, printers, folders, archiving, clips as well as the time costs – walking to and from the printer, finding the punch, finding the file, copying or scanning and emailing records to student This must be done for every lesson in the course and so even if it is just 5 minutes each time, it will quickly add up over a course. Even handwriting or typing comments can be very time consuming for instructors. Of course, every instructor loses a student file at least once in a training course and will spend 20 minutes trying to find it! The solution is to use a fully digital lesson planning and delivery system that is easily able to create modified lesson to incorporate “not yet done” items. The system should be able to record every item. It should use mobile technology to allow operation from anywhere. It should use “voice” typing to speed up data input. It should have student log in so that they automatically get a copy of the lesson record as required by 141.280(1) without requiring additional staff time. That’s how you minimize the drag of Costs on your training program.
Minimize Cost, minimize Compliance Complexity and then maximize Visibility into training and strive for the lift that comes from Creating Excellent Pilots and now the training organisation can be up and running, accelerating and growing. What do you think? Are there steps here that you can take? Give me a call to discuss further or simply check out our TRACDsolutions software answer. Its called “Training Records and Competency Development made simple” because it simply works and can get you on the right track.
TRACDsolutions is a fully digital training platform with courses ready for you to use or customise. Digital lesson plans and records become available on computer, tablet or through the free iPad/iPhone (and soon Android) app. Lessons can be easily modified “on the fly”. Additional evidence can be added to a record straight from the mobile device and students “finger sign” the record. Students can log on to their own training area within the platform to view their progress and records and prepare for upcoming lessons. TRACDsolutions will help you to minimize costs and compliance complexity whilst maximising the force for creating excellent pilots and giving you clear visibility into the training process.
Get out of the turbulence. Blue skies for you.
Hadyn Siggins.
P.S. If you’d like to talk to me about flight training courses, click here and I will call you back.
