Day Check and Stay Check

By AFCM (AW) Pedro Gonzalez

This article is dedicated to the night shift supervisors. You are the heart and soul of your maintenance department. I often wonder if that desk Chief ever went home.

Early in my career, just like many of you, I worked the night shift – night check or “stay check” as we used to call it back then. It seems no matter what we did, we were always there so late. We often greeted day check on numerous occasions. We were often tired and could rarely plan our off duty time. I thought when I am in charge, I will put an end to it. I couldn’t understand why we always seemed to get the short end of the stick. Was it because we were on sea duty? It always seemed like our sister squadron was going home before we were. I also felt the desk Chief did not care

about us or maybe the Chief did not want to go home. Eventually, I became a shift supervisor. I soon learned the amount of time we stayed at work depended on us. I still thought my desk Chief did not want to go home, but now I was in a position to do something about it. As you advance to positions of greater responsibility and experience, you will encounter roadblocks preventing you from completing your assigned tasks. I frequently asked myself, do we have enough people? Are our technicians trained and qualified? What are the priorities for the night, for the week and long-range? Lastly, how are we going to get there from here? As a Petty Officer second class (E-5) and shift supervisor, it was not always easy to understand all the moving pieces that play into the “big picture” of managing aviation maintenance. It often felt like we were working in isolation — airframes against the rest of the squadron.

Photo by Seaman Apprentice Orion Shotton

Fast forward many years later and as we conduct safety assessments around the fleet, I continue to see the same patterns. The same work centers remain in isolation against the rest of the squadron, staying late every night. As in the past, the same questions remain; do you have enough people? How many people do you need? Did the LPO and division Chief include you in their plan to overcome the shortage? Do you perform the bulk of the maintenance on your shift? Are your technicians trained and qualified? You are likely not going to have everyone fully qualified on your shift. If your command has a robust training program, you should have a rotation of qualified apprentices and journeymen on your shift. Your shift likely performs the bulk of the maintenance, so the new Sailors will be exposed to a myriad of discrepancies that is invaluable to their training. The short answer is, you need a good balance and rotation of apprentices and journeymen. Again, get involved with your LPO and Chief to determine what’s going to work best for your situation. What are the priorities for the night, for the week and long range? The answer to this question has multiple layers; each one of those layers builds upon the previous one. First, what is the priority for the night? Priorities continuously change based on scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and upcoming detachments. The schedule also may be influenced by your work’s backlog. Are you supporting other work centers or waiting for others to complete their tasks? Do you have everything needed to support your workload for today and for future taskings? Are your personnel taking leave, transferring or going to schools? These are some of the issues you need to discuss with your LPO and Chief. How are we going to get there from here? One of the most common topics cited on command climate surveys is a lack of communication. Did you know you are a critical part of bridging the communication gap? Results from our assessments continually show the breakdown in communication occurs between the E5-O3 levels, which is our middle management. If your shift doesn’t know what is going on, you may be the first point of failure. It is your responsibility as a shift supervisor to know what the future brings. It’s your job to keep them informed. There will be some nights when you will have to make on-the-spot decisions, but that shouldn’t be every night. Remember, the goal is to get in, complete the required tasks safely, effectively, efficiently and go home. You are the first line of defense to make that happen, but it will require a lot of your time, experience and engagement, both up and down the chain of command.