Mastering Airport Equipment Safety Audits: A Step-by-Step Guide

The Importance of Accurate Airport Equipment Safety Audits
4 Tips for Conducting Effective Airport Equipment Safety Audits
Make Airport Safety Audits Count
Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

Airports rely on equipment safety audits to keep people safe from preventable accidents, stay compliant, and avoid expensive downtime by identifying issues before they start.Industrial labels for durable assets in harsh environments, combined with simple digital audit trail tracking, can make your airport equipment audits more accurate, consistent, and transparent for stakeholders.

Maintaining continuity of airport operations can be a challenge. Consider how highly regulated aviation equipment is and how one malfunctioning piece of airport equipment can create unnecessary safety hazards and headaches. Regularly performing safety audits on airport equipment is one of the best ways to ensure everything is in working order and stay ahead of these issues.

The challenge is making sure those safety audits are thorough and conducted consistently every time. Read on to learn why airport equipment safety audits are important and how to perform them correctly.

The Importance of Accurate Airport Equipment Safety Audits

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Equipment safety audits can feel like busy work to some teams. But those checkboxes exist for a reason. Equipment safety checks help airport teams identify hazards before injuries and costly downtime occur.

Here’s how conducting accurate airport equipment safety audits keeps your people safe and helps you get the most out of your equipment. Standardizing your equipment safety checklists can also ensure you:

Stay compliant: Safety is never a guessing game in aviation. Audits verify your ground support equipment (GSE), maintenance, and inspection paperwork complies with rigorous legal standards. When done correctly, audits also create an audit trail that proves your due diligence whenever inspectors come knocking.
Mitigate risk: A slip up with airport equipment can cause accidents. Ramp accidents around the world injure 243,000 people every year. That breaks down to nine injuries for every 1,000 flights departed. While you can’t always prevent injury on airport operations, equipment safety checks can identify hazards before they put people in harm’s way.
Reduce costs: The earlier you can identify equipment issues, the sooner you can schedule repairs. Preventing unexpected breakdowns also means less unscheduled downtime, which costs airports millions of dollars annually.

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4 Tips for Conducting Effective Airport Equipment Safety Audits

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Auditing airport equipment is more effective when it exceeds the minimum requirements set by law. An audit process keeps you organized and reliable — something crucial to an industry where minor differences can mean drastic delays and expenses. Use these tips to make your airport equipment safety audits more effective.

1. Label All Audited Equipment

You can’t start an audit without one thing: understanding what assets you need to audit. If your airport has issues with lost IDs, sloppy naming conventions and illegible labels, maintaining proper inspection records year over year will be nearly impossible. This challenge is compounded when you need to audit ground support equipment. These pieces get shuffled and used by many teams daily.

Camcode’s rugged asset tags, including RFID asset tags, allow airports to easily identify assets and link physical assets to their digital records. Standard labels fade and peel away, but our Metalphoto® anodized aluminum asset tags encapsulate important data underneath the surface.

Barcodes and text can’t fade from UV rays, scraping, chemicals or extreme temperatures, so there is less need for relabeling and missed audit history from lost or illegible identification.

2. Log Audits Digitally

Paper checklists can fail us, but a digital audit log keeps things standardized. Audit trails prove inspections were completed, identify recurring failures and distribute findings.

Deploying a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) allows everyone to be on the same page by tracking information such as:

Asset ID number
Inspection date
Inspector’s name
Asset location

Logging digitally is even faster when using scannable, high-contrast asset tags. Technicians can view maintenance history in the field and eliminate data entry errors to maintain accurate audit information.

3. Prioritize Audits by Risk

Not all assets present the same level of risk. When resources are constrained, airport equipment maintenance teams may want to focus on inspecting higher-risk assets first. Move these assets to the top of your airport equipment safety inspection list if they:

Are frequently used on the ramp
Contact aircraft frequently
Transport heavier loads
Have experienced previous maintenance failures

Permanent, readable labels also simplify risk-based prioritization by allowing assets to be easily identified and grouped with similar assets. Labeling removes confusion even when multiple teams utilize the same equipment fleet or pool.

4. Thoroughly Inspect Ground Support Equipment (GSE)

Ground support equipment is another area that may require extra attention. This equipment tends to be used in high traffic, high risk areas around the airport. Issues with GSE can arise unexpectedly, even if it looks like everything is functioning properly. After enforcing regular inspections, one airport discovered that 44% of their GSE had failed inspection.

When auditing GSE, inspectors should look for:

Equipment condition
Damage
Tire tread depth
Leaks
Controls
Warning labels

Keeping assets clean is another important aspect. Buildup can hide damage and leaks. Clearly visible, permanent asset labeling is also important. Labels that aren’t easily washed away by dirt, cleaning chemicals, and the elements allow inspectors to easily identify assets and verify paperwork.

Make Airport Safety Audits Count

An airport equipment safety audit can highlight deficiencies with your equipment. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Safety audits are where you begin to build a safer, more reliable airport that prioritizes your passengers’ safety while reducing costs and equipment downtime.

That’s where Camcode comes in. We help make that process digital. Gathering asset data can be a challenge when trying to link your operations on the airfield to what’s being entered into your CMMS. Our durable asset tags allow for more accurate equipment tracking and better audit trails from gate to gate.

See what Camcode can do for your airport. Request your free label and tag evaluation kit today.