RENOWNED independent investigators have reviewed Nigeria’s Accident Investigation Bureau’s( AIB) systems, procedures and processes and adjudged them to be professional and at par with what entails in Europe and the rest of the a world.
This was revealed yesterday at the Safety House after the conclusion of a one-week peer review exercise aimed at appraising the Bureau’s systems and processes of accident investigation benchmarking them against international standard.
According to the team of experts consisting former Commissioner, Banjul Accord Group Accident Investigation Agency ( BAGAIA), Caj Frostell and Chief Air Safety Inspector from Safety Investigation Authority , Finland, Ismo Aaltonen, the steps the AIB take towards investigating and releasing its accident reports are very much standard.
The duo were unanimous in their findings and praised the level of commitment, personnel, human capacity building and infrastructure in place to carry out investigations in the country.
Frostell who spoke on their work with the AIB said,” The objective of this week is to carry out peer review which is something that is being done in Europe . The steps taken by the AIB are very much on an international level.”
They also explained that in details things might be done slightly differently but the general processes are followed to the logical conclusion.
Responding on specifics, Aaltonen explained that with regards human capacity building and training the AIB was on track.
He said,”From what was appraised the AIB has the capability to handle all the needs of an investigation, there are skilled professionals here unlike what we have in my country although it is smaller. Investigation management is great, we have to minimise the time of investigation and their reports. There is a tremendous training facility, they are retraining investigators and training new ones and this is good.”
“On processes, things can be done slightly different ways from point A to point B, we take different routes but the end process and product is usually the same. I don’t see much difference , we are working with the same methods and principles and I am happy it is well established.”
“We also discussed so many things including management and timeout takes to issue reports in a timely manner.”
Commissioner of the AIB, Akin Olateru who gave an overview as to why the AIB has embarked on this peer review exercise reiterated that
the Bureau’s primary function is investigating causes(remote and immediate) of accident/incident with the intent of making safety recommendations to prevent a reoccurrence of similar accident/incident.
He went onto explain that one of his desired plan is to make the AIB a world-class institution stressing that the effect of the review is being felt already while implementation commences from Monday
” For us to be world-class, we have to provide world-class product, world-class people, world-class equipment and our processes must be world-class and the beauty of the aviation industry is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheels.
” the peer review will help measure our equipment, infrastructure, our people, look at our system, our processes, our procedures, regulations and our Organisation as a whole and benchmark it against European standards. That is why we have these highly trained gentlemen doing this appraisal, Nigeria is already a leader in West Africa, we want to lead in accident investigation in Africa and globally.
It is however, not an audit, but a peer review to see where we are and where we need to be,” Olateru said.
