In base maintenance where mostly aircraft structural
repairs will be carried out and span more than one or more shifts to be completed. Hence, shift and task handovers are needed to ensure that all the works and progress will be passed on to next shift clearly. Communication is a very important part which form a good shift handover. Good communication and shift handover are to ensure good continuity of the work and task. Shift handover basically depends on the outgoing personnels ability to understand and pass over the job, incoming personnels ability to understand and retrieve the information provided by outgoing person. As a good rule of thumb, there should be an overlap of 20 or 30 minutes for the shift handover to take place. Every outgoing personnel should clearly brief the incoming person about the work progress, problems encountered and tasks targeted to be completed by that shift. The most important must to ensure them whom you briefed
are providing the feedback by understandable
reaction. Types of communication that can be used in handover are either in written form or verbal form. To ensure a purposeful communication is established, the sender must make sure the receiver is using the same channel of communication and language. For verbal communication, this might be face-to-face, or via telephone. Written communication might be notes, memos, documents or emails. Last but not least, good communication and shift handover are important because they can provide traceability. Each personnel involved in structural repairs are deemed responsible for the tasks which they perform. As a result, every tasks can be clearly traced back and the person can be easily discovered if the part that under him give arise to a problem. In addition, good communication and task handover are important to reduce or prevent any mistake or accident from happening. Since the all the tasks are clearly communicated, improper use of tools, steps or procedures can be avoided to ensure the efficiency of the work. As conclusion, the standard operating procedures for shift handover will be clearly listed in most of the maintenance organization exposition(MOE) for their staffs to adhere. In order for a free accident working environment, good communication must be established and promoted as good safety culture.