DOT Highlights FAA’s Local Safety Council Idea
Friday, July 20, 2012


NATCA Safety Committee Chairman Steve Hansen (left), with Safety Culture Action Team Lead Jo Strang and Tony Manzione, the ATO's Partnership for Safety team lead.

Editor's Note: The following is an article collaboratively produced by NATCA and Air Traffic Organization (ATO) Communications.

Last winter, the Department of Transportation (DOT) issued an IdeaHub challenge to employees, asking them, “What can we do at DOT to integrate the new Safety Policy into our daily work?” ATO’s Partnership for Safety team lead Tony Manzione submitted a response suggesting the creation of collaborative local safety councils.

The idea came from the work Manzione was doing on the Partnership for Safety initiative with NATCA co-lead and Safety Committee Chairman Steve Hansen.

Designed to fuel collaboration between management and labor to resolve local safety concerns, the Partnership for Safety team had been working to establish local safety councils made up of management and labor representatives at air traffic control facilities.

“We realized we had all this great safety data and wanted to find a way to get it into the hands of the local facilities,” Hansen said. “When facilities create their own collaborative local safety council, they are given access to safety data collected by the MITRE Corporation and through the Air Traffic Safety Action Program (ATSAP) that is not otherwise available. The de-identified data allows them to look for trends and learn from others.”

The idea of local safety councils intrigued the DOT Safety Council, which invited Manzione and Hansen to brief it on the concept in June. The DOT Safety Council is a multi-agency team consisting of administrators, chief safety officers and other safety leaders from the department’s operating administrations.

“We hope to generate additional energy around this model for enhancing safety throughout DOT,” said Safety Culture Action Team Lead Jo Strang in a letter to NATCA President Paul Rinaldi and ATO Chief Operating Officer David Grizzle.

“We are honored, but the recognition is not about us,” Manzione said. “We just represent all of the people engaged in local safety councils who are already working to take us to the next level of safety.  It is about collaboration, and local action on local issues.”


Manzione (left), Hansen and Tony Fazio, director of the FAA's Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention.