What Aircraft Maintenance Taught Me About Workplace Safety

A small piece of a jeweler's screwdriver might not seem like a significant safety concern. In many workplaces, a broken tool might appear to be a relatively straightforward maintenance issue.

In military aviation maintenance, a missing screwdriver tip could bring maintenance work to a halt.

I know because I experienced it.

During my time in the United States Navy, I worked in aviation maintenance, including supporting the E-6B Mercury aircraft. The procedures, expectations, and discipline of that environment shaped how I understood workplace safety long before I began my civilian career as a safety professional.

Nearly two decades later, those lessons remain relevant. Not because every workplace operates like a military flightline, but because the fundamentals of effective safety management are remarkably consistent across industries.

The most important lesson? Safety cannot be something we do in addition to the work. It has to become part of how the work gets done.

Prevention Begins Before the Work

Earlier in my Navy career, I worked in an Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department (AIMD), where we maintained nickel-cadmium and lead-acid batteries used in helicopters and C-2 Greyhound aircraft.

Battery maintenance introduced hazards that demanded respect. Depending on the battery type and task, personnel could be exposed to corrosive chemicals, electrical hazards, and the potential for fires or explosions.

Personal protective equipment was essential, but it wasn't the foundation of our protection.

The proper grounding systems had to be in place, tested, and maintained. Appropriate neutralizing materials needed to be available in case of a chemical spill. Safeguards were established before maintenance began, rather than relying on technicians to react after something went wrong.

That distinction has stayed with me throughout my career.

Too often, conversations about workplace safety begin and end with PPE. Gloves, safety glasses, face shields, and protective clothing certainly have their place, but they represent only part of an effective approach to hazard control.

The stronger question is: What have we done to prevent the incident from occurring in the first place?

In battery maintenance, we understood that protective equipment was not a substitute for properly maintained safeguards, safe work practices, and emergency preparedness.

That principle extends well beyond aviation. Whether the task involves industrial machinery, hazardous chemicals, electrical work, or maintenance activities, effective safety management requires organizations to identify hazards and establish appropriate controls before employees encounter them.

Prevention isn't a reaction to an incident. It's preparation for the work.

The Missing Screwdriver Tip

One of the most enduring lessons from my aviation career came from something almost insignificant in size.

Foreign object debris, commonly referred to as FOD, is a serious concern in aviation. A stray piece of hardware, a forgotten tool, or other debris can cause foreign object damage to aircraft systems and potentially contribute to catastrophic failures.

Preventing FOD requires a level of discipline that reaches into nearly every aspect of maintenance.

Tools are checked out and accounted for. Inventories are maintained. Work areas are inspected. FOD sweeps are performed routinely, and the controls themselves are regularly audited.

These activities aren't reserved for special inspections or performed only when someone expects a problem. They're part of everyday operations.

During one maintenance activity, the tip of a jeweler's screwdriver broke off.

The missing piece was identified during the tool check-in process.

Work stopped.

A thorough cleaning and inspection followed as personnel searched for the missing fragment. Eventually, the tiny screwdriver tip was found in a dustpan during sweeping.

It would have been easy to dismiss such a small piece of metal as inconsequential. But that wasn't how the maintenance system operated.

The tool accountability process identified the discrepancy. Personnel responded immediately. The missing fragment was recovered before work continued.

The value wasn't simply that we found the piece. It was that the established process worked exactly when it needed to.

Every element mattered: the inventory controls, the check-in procedure, the expectation to stop work, and the follow-through required to resolve the discrepancy.

Remove any one of those elements, and the outcome could have been different.

When Procedures Become Habits

What stands out to me about that incident isn't that work stopped. It's that stopping was understood to be part of the job.

The military environment played an enormous role in establishing those expectations.

Procedures were taught, reinforced, and enforced. Repetition turned compliance into routine practice. Over time, activities such as tool accountability and FOD inspections became habits rather than tasks that required constant reminders.

Of course, aviation maintenance wasn't performed without operational pressure.

We were supporting aircraft and missions during wartime. Maintenance needed to be completed, aircraft needed to fly, and operational requirements continued regardless of the challenges encountered.

Those pressures aren't entirely different from what civilian organizations experience. Manufacturing facilities have production schedules. Operations teams have service commitments. Maintenance departments face equipment downtime. Leadership must balance competing priorities and customer expectations.

But in aviation maintenance, the consequences of ignoring a discrepancy could be far worse than the inconvenience of stopping to correct it.

Stop-work authority wasn't simply a statement in a policy. It was embedded in the way we operated.

That is an important distinction for any organization.

It's relatively easy to develop procedures, conduct training, and tell employees they have the authority to stop unsafe work.

The real test comes when exercising that authority disrupts a deadline.

Do supervisors support the decision? Do employees trust that raising a concern is the right thing to do? Does the organization investigate and resolve the issue, or does production pressure encourage people to overlook it?

A safety culture is revealed by what happens when following the procedure becomes inconvenient.

Safety Culture Must Survive Change

Since leaving the Navy, I've worked across multiple organizations and industries, gaining a broader perspective on how safety expectations develop and change.

I've observed that environments with significant regulatory oversight and higher-risk operations often have strong incentives to maintain disciplined safety practices.

But I've also seen how organizational change can challenge even established systems.

Leadership transitions, restructuring, shifting priorities, and operational disruptions create opportunities for important details to slip through the cracks.

The procedures may still exist. The policies may remain unchanged. Yet the consistency of their implementation can begin to weaken.

An inspection might get delayed. A routine verification might receive less attention. A deviation might be tolerated because everyone is focused on another pressing issue.

Individually, these changes may seem minor. Collectively, they can undermine the habits and accountability that make a safety program effective.

That is why safety culture cannot depend entirely on one leader, one department, or one particularly diligent employee.

It must be supported by clearly defined responsibilities, consistent expectations, effective controls, and systems that remain functional through organizational change.

Military discipline provided a strong foundation for those expectations during my aviation career. Civilian organizations don't need to replicate a military command structure to accomplish the same objective.

They do, however, need leadership that consistently reinforces safe work practices, supports appropriate stop-work decisions, and treats identified deviations as opportunities for correction rather than inconveniences.

A procedure becomes meaningful when people know it matters, understand why it exists, and can rely on the organization to support its application.

Bringing the Lessons Back to the Workplace

Not every workplace faces the same potential consequences as an aircraft maintenance operation. Hazards, regulatory requirements, and operational risks vary significantly.

But the underlying principles remain relevant.

Establish safeguards before work begins. Build accountability into routine operations. Verify that controls function as intended. Make it normal to identify and correct deviations immediately.

Most importantly, recognize that a strong safety culture isn't demonstrated by how impressive a written program looks.

It's demonstrated through the decisions people make during ordinary work, particularly when schedules are tight, priorities compete, or something unexpected happens.

My experience in Navy aviation maintenance taught me that safety and operational performance are not opposing objectives. Effective controls, reliable procedures, and consistent accountability help make both possible.

The same principles continue to guide my approach to safety management today.

Because sometimes the clearest evidence of a functioning safety culture isn't a completed audit, a polished policy, or a performance metric.

Sometimes it's a missing screwdriver tip, and a team that knows exactly what to do about it.