Counting the things that count
Safety teams count a lot of things: incidents, audit findings, near misses. NOMIC exists to count what really decides whether work goes well: the normal, everyday work of the people who keep operations running.
From the flight deck to the ramp
- Crew Resource Management (CRM)Airlines train crews in teamwork, communication and decision-making, once accident investigations show most accidents involve people working together, not technical failure.
- Threat and Error Management (TEM)Researchers at the University of Texas describe safety as managing threats, errors and undesired states, and look at how crews manage each one.
- LOSAThe Line Operations Safety Audit: trained peers observe normal flights with no jeopardy, using TEM. ICAO endorses it as a way to see how safety works in everyday operations.
- Ground Operations Safety Audit (GOSA)A large Australian airline takes the same approach to the ramp, with trained ramp observers watching normal turnarounds.
- Normal Operations Monitoring (NOM)Developed further at UNSW Aviation in partnership with several airlines, as part of a PhD. It adds what goes right, not only what goes wrong.
- NOMICThe Normal Operations Monitoring International Collaborative: airlines, ground handlers and airports running NOM on their ramps and learning from each other.
A team of psychologists and human factors specialists
NOM was developed by a team of psychologists and human factors specialists at a major Australian airline, starting with the Ground Operations Safety Audit (GOSA): trained ramp people observing normal turnarounds, as LOSA does on the flight deck.
It was then developed into Normal Operations Monitoring (NOM) as part of a PhD with the School of Aviation at UNSW Sydney, analysing more than 1,300 observed turnarounds and adding contemporary safety science.
NOMIC is the next step: NOM for any airline, ground handler or airport, and a collaborative where they learn from each other.
What NOMIC is
NOMIC is the Normal Operations Monitoring International Collaborative. It began as a research and industry collaborative: organisations learning from their own normal operations, and from each other, through evidence and feedback.
The name has a second meaning. In Greek, -nomic refers to the natural laws of a system. NOMIC is about understanding how work systems really behave, not how we imagine they do.
What we believe
- People on the frontline are the main reason operations go well.
- The gap between work as imagined and work as done is where the learning is.
- Trust comes first: no jeopardy, no blame, findings back to the frontline.
- Good safety tools should be within reach of every organisation, not only the largest.
- Data should stay with the people it belongs to.
Within reach of every organisation
Programmes like LOSA have shown how much organisations learn from watching normal work, but most ground handlers can't pay consultancy prices. NOMIC Ramp puts the method, the tool, the coding guide and the templates within reach of every ground operation, so the ramp can benefit as the flight deck has. Because your own people run it with our tools, it costs a fraction of a consultant-led programme. To talk about your operation, see work with us.
Your observations always stay yours.
Beyond the ramp
The method works wherever work can be observed. Ground operations come first. The same approach works in aircraft maintenance and rail, with the same commitment to the people who do the work.
Who is behind it
NOMIC Ramp is made by NOMIC Research Pty Ltd. It is independent: it is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, ICAO, the FAA, the LOSA Collaborative or any airline or ground handler.
Contact: [email protected] · Get in touch
Photos: Pexels (Joerg Mangelsen, Juan Moccagatta, Anh Tran, Tiago Alvar, Messala Ciulla, Alireza Akhlaghi, AdemPercem), used under the Pexels licence. Logos and registrations blurred.