There is always that moment when stepping out of the basket of a man lift that makes me question everything. To handle the discomfort of being 30 feet in the air, I ask myself simple questions like:
Why am I here?
A careful step on to a thin aluminum rib. It wiggles.
Philosophical questions: Do I have a purpose in life?
I pull my other foot off the railing of the man lift while holding onto the strongest-looking pipe over my head.
More questions to distract myself: How much weight can this fiberglass panel hold?
The part I need is ten feet from me.
Is this really worth $10/hour? Yep. Deep philosophical questions.
I climb back into the basket. I am 30 feet in the air in the tail end of the upper engine on a decommissioned MD-11 aircraft. It is time to re-evaluate my life decisions.
I went to college and earned an engineering degree, but there I was in the middle of the 2008 recession, ripping parts off old planes. I’d been unemployed for months without so much as an interview or call-back. I was reduced to replying to poorly worded posts on Craigslist. When a recruiter had called me one day, I was ready to take almost anything.
“It says here you’re an engineer and you have some aviation experience.”
“Yes, Sir.” I was trying to remember my helicopter training from the National Guard several years earlier. Pulling all the vocabulary I could to the front of my mind, I couldn’t afford to let this chance slip away.
“Do you know the difference between clockwise and counter clockwise?”
“Umm… Yes?” Maybe he was just getting warmed up.
“Great! Which way do you turn a bolt to screw it in?”
“Clockwise.” Apparently, the civilian world has lower standards for mechanics.
“Excellent. You’d be amazed how many people don’t know that. That’s the only screening question I have. Let me tell you about the job.” … Much lower standards.
He explained that I would be removing parts from old aircraft so someone else could sell them on “airplane ebay.”
“I don’t have my A&P license. Isn’t that required to work on civilian aircraft?”
“Nah. You only need that to put stuff on the plane. You will just be taking it off. Everything you do has a written procedure in the manual. You just need to be able to read and follow the procedure.”
He lied to me. I don’t think he realized he was lying, but it certainly wasn’t the truth.
I quickly learned that there were two types of people at this facility: the ones that wouldn’t follow procedures and the ones that couldn’t.
Most of the people there completely ignored the computers and printed manuals where all of the procedures were kept. When they were told to remove a part they just ripped into it, taking the minimum number of bolts and other parts out. Their cavalier methods created our second group of people: those who couldn’t follow procedures because several of the key parts or steps had not been performed by the previous crew.
Within the first week I was identified and ranked as: “not an idiot” and very clearly placed in the second group so that I could clean up the mess from those in the first group.
And that is how I found myself in the office one morning talking to the shift lead.
“We need this heat shield. Another crew pulled the engine off the top but they didn’t get the heat shield. It should be easier now without the engine.”
No. It was not. The cowling around the engine was in two halves hinged and hanging from the top. The procedures said they should be propped open on struts that clip to the engine to work on the engine, and removed before the engine is pulled.
But now there is no engine to prop the strut on, and the cowling must be first propped open before it can be removed.
So there was not going to be any way to remove the cowling and no way to prop it open so I could get the manlift inside the engine compartment.
Someone had also tied the two sections of cowling together with some cheap yellow nylon rope so it didn’t blow open in the wind.
There was no good way to get into it. Imagine one of those yellow claw “grab the toy” games at the arcade. Except when it wiggles instead of the stuffed bunny falling out it would be me falling. If I slipped or the rope gave way my safety lanyard and harness would catch me, after I bounced off the plane a couple of times.
“So, don’t fall,” suggested the helpful voice in my head.
I got the part out eventually by using the various overhead lines like monkey bars and taking the part off one-handed.
After getting down I remembered a comment from my grandfather about the good old days when you could drink a beer or something harder at work. That would have been really nice that day.
I handed off the part to my boss. He already had the next disaster lined up for me to look at.
Do you find yourself constantly cleaning up after your people who won’t follow procedures no matter how much you yell or threaten? Are the people you use to clean up the mess getting burned out and quitting?
This facility was completely focused on their Product and Parts. Their Processes were all written by the main aviation companies, but because they didn’t understand their People, the Processes were useless. In the front office everything was managed by engineers and accountants who didn’t have the right mental models to manage how things actually got done by the mechanics.
I have spent decades observing this split between expectations and reality, between shop and office. After much work I have distilled this experience into straightforward systems that will let you reorient your People and Processes – with a minimum of effort – to avoid problems like the ones this junkyard faced.
I can show you how to change your focus and build your Processes around your People to deliver your best Product… without driving you to drinking on the job.
Are you ready to clean up how you deal with your Products, Processes, and People?