Check Management

Check Management is often overlooked as an area for serious cost controls. In large part, this is as much due to hangar myths as it is to the complexity of the task; Spread over several working shifts, often seven days a week for which a large part of the task is not predefined.

The checks can generally be divided into two major elements; routine or scheduled tasks and non-routine or findings worthy of action.

Induction and final return to service are largely routine but the meat in the sandwich provides rich layers of intertwined jobs, scheduling conflicts and opportunities for un-reconciled cost and general management.

Materials needed to support checks come from a variety of sources and add some more variability and management issues to the activity. Expedient rather than cost effective decisions prevail as conflicting access, robbed parts and shortages disrupt any planned flow.

Traditionally, most airlines have become accustomed to what these checks cost (or what they were billed) and, with escalation, pricing has become an expectation not a science. Worse still the realistic cost/price is clouded by the variable content of differing routine checks and the fact that more than half of the man-hours and material is non-routine.

The only true way to compare a check is to apply ShouldCost techniques and detailed cost collection to each major activity. This assumes access to a comprehensive database of both routine and typical non-routine activities.