How do you guarantee airport construction safety?

On many occasions worldwide, airport construction has produced safety events despite careful planning on the part of the airport operator, construction contractors, ATC, and the airport flight operator community.  

In some cases the events were catastrophic, such as in Lexington, Kentucky and Taipei, Taiwan.  In others, and as luck would have it, they turned out to be just another opportunity to learn a frightening lesson, or more typically, lessons.

When embarking on a construction project, many of the airport stakeholders often and somewhat understandably believe that they have the necessary experience to handle whatever the project may throw at them.  After all, "they have done this hundreds of times".  "This is just a small project" is also frequently stated.  Worse, when confronted with past evidence of airport construction related safety events, these same people often unknowingly take comfort in blaming past operators "who should have known better".

The problem is that this mindset is a common and almost necessary starting point for airport construction accidents and incidents. Like it or not, small projects, even minor taxiway segment construction projects, have the potential to create large amounts of confusion.  Also, past successes with local airport construction safety techniques have been proven not to guarantee future safety.  

So how do you safeguard your airport and operation?  You begin by first acknowledging that a true safety culture doesn't rely on blaming the people as a plausible explanation for past failures.  As Sidney Dekker would profess, finding and removing the so-called bad apples only creates an "illusion of safety" and not real safety.  Real safety, such as that desired during your airport construction project, can only be achieved by acknowledging this and by seeing the people as a source of wisdom and creativity and not a convenient target of blame.  

Second, treat any airport construction project as a potentially harmful one.  An airport is a complex environment and any alterations to it, even small ones, can have catastrophic results.  Don't underestimate the effects of your construction project no matter how large or small it is.

Finally, seek out the real experts that you need. Air traffic controllers, pilots, airport operations specialists, and vehicle operators, are close to you.  Tap into their knowledge and creativity to enhance the safety of your airport construction project.