My work day – group captain Andy Read 

My role at the MAA is to lead the Oversight Programme. We use surveillance and audits to assure the air safety management systems of front-line flying units and command headquarters, as well as a range of supporting organisations in defence and maintenance organisations in industry. 

Our vision as a world-class safety regulator means we must demonstrate publicly, that our assurance of air safety management carries the highest level of credibility. Our relationship with the CQI (as an IRCA Approved Auditor Competence Scheme) gives us the means to both test and continually improve ourselves.

Audits are very important to the MAA because they are our primary means for assuring the risk to life of military air operations is tolerable. Audits also enable us to engage with the community and this helps us, as the regulator, to remain at the cutting edge of the defence aviation sector.

Assurance by its nature tends to be backward-looking – looking at what went well or not so well. However, commanders really want to know how they can improve. It’s hard to answer that question while remaining independent but it’s definitely worth trying.

The best part of my job is getting out there into the wider industry. This means finding out what’s going on in defence aviation, learning from others and influencing the thinking of commanders, the most senior officers and company chief executives on air safety.

In three words, the biggest challenge for quality professionals in the defence industry is: spreading best practice. 

The greatest lesson I have learned is if we lead people well and invest in their knowledge and experience, they will be our greatest strength. However, if we fail to understand what makes people more prone to error they will also be our greatest weakness.