Sign-offs

  Research indicates that many maintenance tasks are signed off unseen. In order to prevent omissions, mis-installations, etc., every maintenance task or group of tasks should be signed-off. To ensure the task or group of tasks is completed, sign-off should only take place after completion and appropriate checks. 

        Work by noncompetent personnel (i.e. temporary staff, trainee, etc.) should be checked by authorised personnel before they sign-off. The grouping of tasks for the purpose of signing-off should allow critical steps to be clearly identified.

      NOTE: A “sign-off” is a statement by the competent person performing or supervising the work, that the task or group of tasks has been correctly performed. A sign-off relates to one step in the maintenance process and is therefore different to the release to service of the aircraft. 

Signing off small groups of tasks will help prevent situations where a technician is called away from one task to do another, and the person picking up the previous task has no record of what has been completed and what has not. If there are accepted break points at frequent intervals during each main task (ie. the sign-off points), technicians should be encouraged to continue with the task up to the next break point without interruption, and only after the sign-off allow themselves to be diverted onto another task if this is required. Sign-off points would be determined by the maintenance organisation as appropriate to the nature of their work.                        Sign-offs should be considered a mechanism for helping to ensure that all steps have been carried out, and carried out correctly, and not primarily as a mechanism for identifying the responsible person in the event of something going wrong.                                                                  It is understood that, in some cases, the person signing-off the task or groups of tasks will be unable to view or inspect, in detail, the work which has been carried out, but it is important that that person has a high degree of confidence that the work has been carried out correctly.                       If sign-offs end up as purely a paper exercise, where the person signing off the tasks has little idea whether they have been carried out correctly, the whole point of the sign-off mechanism will have been lost.                                   It is appreciated that signing off tasks generates a certain workload, but considered that the safety benefits outweigh the disbenefits.

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