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The ability to learn from previous events in support of preventing future similar events is a valuable attribute of aviation safety systems. A primary constituent of this mechanism is the reporting of incidents and its importance in support of developing learning material. Many regulatory requirements clearly define a structure for the use of learning material through organisational and procedural continuation training programmes. This paper aims to review aviation regulation and practice, highlighting the importance of learning as a key tenet of safety performance.

Applicable International Civil Aviation Organisation requirements and the European Union (EU) regulation in aircraft maintenance and continuing airworthiness management have been critically reviewed through content analysis.

This review has identified gaps in the European implementing rules that could be addressed in the future to support a more effective approach to the delivery of lessons in the aircraft maintenance and continuing airworthiness management sector. These include light-touch of learning and guidance requirements, lack of methodologies for the augmentation of safety culture assessment, absence of competence requirements for human factors trainers and lack of guidance on standardised root-cause analyses.

This paper offers aviation safety practitioners working within the European Aviation Safety Agency regulatory regime an insight into important matters affecting the ability to learn from incidents.

This paper evaluates critically and independently the regulation and practice that can affect the ability of EU regulated aircraft maintenance and continuing airworthiness management organisations to learn from incidents. The outputs from this research present a fresh and independent view of organisational practices that, if left unchecked, are capable of impeding the incident learning process.

The purpose of this study is to establish a systematic framework to characterise the safety of air routes, in terms of separation minima infringements (SMIs) between en-route aircraft, based on the definition of models known as safety performance functions.

Techniques with high predictive capability were selected that enable both expert knowledge and data to be harnessed: Bayesian networks. It was necessary to establish a conceptual framework that integrates the knowledge currently available on the causality and precursors of SMIs with the hindsight derived from the analysis of the type of data available. To translate the conceptual framework into a set of causal subnets, the concepts of air traffic management (ATM) barrier model and event trees have been incorporated.

The model combines analytics and insights, as well as predictive capability, to answer the question of how airspace separation infringements are produced and what their frequency of occurrence will be. The main outputs of the network are the predicted probability of success for the ATM barriers and the predicted probability distribution of the vertical and horizontal separation of an aircraft in its closest point of approach.

The main contribution of this work is that, by virtue of the calculation capacity obtained, the network can be used to draw conclusions about the impact that a modification of the airspace and of the traffic, or operational conditions, would have on the effectiveness of the barriers and on the final distributions of distance between aircraft in the CPA, thereby estimating the probability of SMI.

This paper aims to investigate the in-company training according to the technologically demanding and safety-critical feature of the aircraft industry. This study addresses to the tension between the structured and the more incidental part of in-company learning in their training and learning environment.

Against the background of concepts of workplace learning from vocational training research and concepts of the safety management system from safety research, aircraft companies from England and Germany were visited. Data from interviews with training managers and trainees as well as non-participant observations are analysed.

The findings show that workplace vocational learning in this industry is guided by different measures to design the learning environment to prevent purely incidental and informal knowledge acquisition. However, the formalisation of informal learning process leads to a high expenditure of material, personnel and time resources. The findings show that trainers and training managers working together internationally creatively manage different training systems. The training activities are designed to convey the values of safety culture like responsibility, accuracy, transparent communication and reporting. The requirements of the safety management system are also met through the training.

Challenges and tensions in the actual implementation of the training activities could not be identified. The people interviewed were selected by the companies, so there is a risk that certain perceptions are over-represented.

The results show that the safety-critical industry needs its own pedagogical approach to workplace learning, which is not based on independent work processes in the workplace. Insights can be drawn for in-company training in other safety-critical industries too. However, to enable effective in-company learning, which at the same time strengthens the safety culture of the company, many resources must be used. The companies must consider all dimensions of work from the individual level to the work structure level.

This paper discusses the tension between formal and informal learning and shows the specific design of this tension on the basis of a concrete industry for the specific needs of this industry. The results lead to the realisation that the general discussion about workplace learning must be viewed in a differentiated way depending on the industry.

Air traffic controllers (ATCOs) play a fundamental role in the safe, orderly and efficient management of air traffic. In the interests of improving safety, it would be beneficial to know what the workload thresholds are that permit ATCOs to carry out their functions safely and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a simulation platform to be able to validate an affective-cognitive performance methodology based on neurophysiological factors applied to ATCOs, to define the said thresholds.

The process followed in setting up the simulation platform is explained, with particular emphasis on the design of the program of exercises. The tools designed to obtain additional information on the actions of ATCOs and how their workload will be evaluated are also explained.

To establish the desired methodology, a series of exercises has been designed to be simulated. This paper describes the project development framework and validates it, taking preliminary results as a reference. The validation of the framework justifies further study to extend the preliminary results.

This paper describes the first part of the project only, i.e. the definition of the problem and a proposed methodology to arrive at a workable solution. Further work will concentrate on carrying out a program of simulations and subsequent detailed analysis of the data obtained, based on the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results presented.

The methodology will be an important tool from the point of view of safety and the work carried out by ATCOs. This first phase is crucial as it provides a solid foundation for later stages.

This paper aims to exemplify the use of project management tools in the scheduling of aircraft maintenance activities. This process is known as maintenance, repair and overhaul and it has gained importance within the aeronautical sector due to its expected growth in the coming years; however, it also faces increasing competitiveness in its market. This fact gives rise to the need of acting in maintenance management and seeking lower costs while maintaining the quality of the service provided. The purpose of this paper is to propose the structuring of a procedure that aims to reduce the total maintenance time (downtime) and guarantee the delivery of the aircraft on time.

The paper, through a case study at a Brazilian aircraft maintenance center, used critical path method and critical chain project management, the latter being derived from the theory of constraints, with the purpose of analyzing resources systematically and synchronizing the activities in the precedence network.

As a result, it is shown that downtime can be reduced from 11 to 5 days and improvements are proposed to achieve greater market competitiveness.

This paper demonstrates the competitive advantage that resulted from the application of project management tools in the aircraft maintenance planning and execution.

The purpose of this study is to develop and describe a process which can be applied to develop new methods in the context of preliminary aircraft sizing in a successful and efficient way.

The tasks to development new aircraft sizing methods are systematically analyzed. In particular, repeating and nonrepeating tasks and common or unique tasks. Then ordered in a sequence and described generically.

A development process for new aircraft design methods which are necessary for new technologies or configurations is introduced and explained step by step.

Introducing the capability to deal with new technologies or configurations, aircraft design tools or aircraft concepts requires new sizing methods.

The paper presents a systematic approach which can be used to develop a great amount of new sizing methods with a comparable usability and quality standard in an efficient and effective way.

This paper describes and discusses company spin-ins and spin-outs as a means to understand company growth in a dynamic context. The following question is asked: How can growth be understood in spin-ins and spin-outs of innovative firms? The paper suggests return on capabilities as a measure to understand growth in an open innovation context.

The empirical part of the paper consists of a single case study. Data was captured through interviews and secondary data sources.

The paper points to that resources alone do not explain strategic decisions by a company and how spin-ins and spin-outs result from the need for capabilities, changes in business foci and temporary solutions to deal with overcapacities or lack of alternatives.

The paper contributes to research by discussing contemporary issues in strategy and innovation and relating them to the resource-based view and the growth of the firm. Spin-outs, and acquisitions and divestitures as interlinked events have rarely been focused on in the literature, while they remain frequent phenomena in practice.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), colloquially called drones, are widely applied in many sectors of the economy, including the construction industry. They are used for building inspections, damage assessment, land measurements, safety inspections, monitoring the progress of works, and others.

The study notes that UAV pose new, and not yet present, risks in the construction industry. New threats arise, among others, from the development of new technologies, as well as from the continuous automation and robotization of the construction industry. Education regarding the safe use of UAV and the proper use of drones has a chance to improve the safety of work when using these devices.

The procedure (protocol) was developed for the correct and safe preparation and planning of an unmanned aerial vehicle flight during construction operations.

Based on the analysis of available sources, no such complete procedure has yet been developed for the correct, i.e. compliant with applicable legal regulations and occupational health and safety issues, preparation for flying UAV. The verification and validation of the developed flight protocol was performed on a sample of over 100 different flight operations.

Rapid urbanisation and recent shock events have reiterated the need for resilient infrastructure, as seen in the pandemic. Yet, knowledge gaps in construction robotics and human–robot teams (HRTs) research limit maximising these emerging technologies’ potentials. This paper aims to review the state of the art of research in this area to identify future research directions in HRTs able to aid the resilience and responsiveness of the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector.

A total of 71 peer-reviewed journal articles centred on robotics and HRTs were reviewed through a quantitative approach using scientometric techniques using Gephi and VOSviewer. Research focus deductions were made through bibliometric analysis and co-occurrence analysis of reviewed publications.

This study revealed sparse and small research output in this area, indicating immense research potential. Existing clusters signifying the need for further studies are on automation in construction, human–robot teaming, safety in robotics and robotic designs. Key publication outlets and construction robotics contribution towards the built environment’s resilience are discussed.

The identified gaps in the thematic areas illustrate priorities for future research focus. It raises awareness on human factors in collaborative robots and potential design needs for construction resilience.

Rapid urbanisation and recent shock events have reiterated the need for resilient infrastructure, as seen in the pandemic. Yet, knowledge gaps in construction robotics and HRTs research limit maximising these emerging technologies’ potentials. This paper aims to review the state of the art of research in this area to identify future research directions in HRTs able to aid the resilience and responsiveness of the AEC sector.

Digital twin (DT) is an emerging technology that enables sophisticated interaction between physical objects and their virtual replicas. Although DT has recently gained significant attraction in both industry and academia, there is no systematic understanding of DT from its development history to its different concepts and applications in disparate disciplines. The majority of DT literature focuses on the conceptual development of DT frameworks for a specific implementation area. Hence, this paper provides a state-of-the-art review of DT history, different definitions and models, and six types of key enabling technologies. The review also provides a comprehensive survey of DT applications from two perspectives: (1) applications in four product-lifecycle phases, i.e. product design, manufacturing, operation and maintenance, and recycling and (2) applications in four categorized engineering fields, including aerospace engineering, tunneling and underground engineering, wind engineering and Internet of things (IoT) applications. DT frameworks, characteristic components, key technologies and specific applications are extracted for each DT category in this paper. A comprehensive survey of the DT references reveals the following findings: (1) The majority of existing DT models only involve one-way data transfer from physical entities to virtual models and (2) There is a lack of consideration of the environmental coupling, which results in the inaccurate representation of the virtual components in existing DT models. Thus, this paper highlights the role of environmental factor in DT enabling technologies and in categorized engineering applications. In addition, the review discusses the key challenges and provides future work for constructing DTs of complex engineering systems.