SPOTLIGHT: STEVE WALTERS

Director of Strategic Safety Development — PHI International

Seasoned aviation safety expert Steve Walters’ career took flight when he first set foot in a Cessna 172 aged 15. Originally from inner-city Birmingham in the United Kingdom, Steve was a young boy when his family upped sticks and immigrated to South Africa.

Armed with little more than a thick ‘Brummie’ accent and a burning passion to fly, he joined the South African Air Force as a school leaver, kicking off 23 years of service and the start of a remarkable career path that eventually landed him in the role he’s in today – Director of Strategic Safety Development for PHI International.

Steve spoke to HomeBase about a few of his experiences along the way, from flying a variety of jets to investigating aircraft accident sites, to a chance meeting with Nelson Mandela. And that only scratches the surface. Steve said: “I’m going on 70, which I think is the new 40 – it’s all been great fun – and continues to be – and I’d like another 20 years to see where it all goes!”

Complex technology breeds exotic failures.

Texan T6 - Chief Instructor of the SAAF CFS Redhawk Combat Support Helicopter Airship

Redhawk Combat Support Helicopter

Airship

You served 23 years with the South African Air Force as a line pilot – can you pinpoint a couple of experiences that stand out for you from your time serving – good and bad?

In one respect there’s no such thing as a good or bad experience, just experience and how its managed. That being said, I began aircraft accident investigation quite early in my career, with my final tour as Head of Flight Safety Investigations. So much of the bad came from standing in smoking holes (accident sites). As for the good, I loved my two tours as a flight instructor, the second being as Chief Instructor of the Air Force Central Flying School where it was great to have a hand in producing so many excellent pilots.

You’ve flown fast- and subsonic jets, a variety of pistons, singles, twins, variety of turboprop, airship, some helicopter – what’s your favourite aircraft to fly and why?

Undoubtedly it was the airship. I’ve had an obsession with airships since childhood, so when the opportunity arose to conduct initial trials on the then-only true, Zeppelin-like rigid airship on the planet, it was a dream come true. During one tethered flight at an Air Force base, an executive jet taxied in and a short while later I was informed President Nelson Mandela had noticed the airship and was coming to talk to us. We were using a rope ladder to access the cockpit, and in my haste to clamber down, I lost my hold and crunched onto the tarmac. I knew of the expression ‘Master Soul’ but I never thought I would meet one, especially from a horizontal position, and what a truly remarkable human being he was.

You spent three years in the prototype environment with South African company Denel Aviation (now Denel Aeronautics) supervising aspects on projects including the Red Hawk combat support helicopter, weapons systems and refurbished vintage aircraft. What was it like to be at the more experimental end of the spectrum?

In aviation, we are perpetual students, and this was one of the steepest learning curves I’ve ever experienced. For the first time, I was working primarily on the engineering side in system safety and was responsible for signing off the Certificates for Flight Trials issued for each experimental flight, stating that it was safe to proceed, so all quite nailbiting. That side of the fence also taught me that the average aircraft engineer is probably the most abused component of the aviation system and that they need and deserve the same organisation protections as are given to aircrew.

You then moved into commercial aviation working with offshore helicopter operators, and presented training including Critical Decision Making to more than 2000 pilots, engineers and fire crew between 1990 and 2015. What – if any – are the common personality traits you noticed across the people who choose these kinds of professions?

Regardless of age, gender, culture and nationality, top aviation professionals share the same traits. As individuals, they relentlessly develop their own competencies, and in teams, they are equally effective as leaders or as followers. They communicate assertively and respectfully in an adultto-adult fashion, surrendering ego in focussing on the optimal solution for any particular problem.

When you worked for Shell as an Aviation Advisor responsible for SMS development and auditing of AOCs contracting globally, what were some of the more interesting places that took you and what are some of the interesting things you learned from your experiences?

Gosh, there’s so much. I enjoyed working with Russian pilots and engineers, they are a magnificent people, although during Crew Resource Management training there would be someone sitting at the back of the class. Whenever I asked a question, all heads would turn and the individual would imperceptibly nod or shake their head, and the crew would then answer or keep quiet as required. At the other end of the spectrum, I worked in Brazil for three years assisting local oil and gas company Petrobras and their contracted aircraft operators in developing an aviation advisory department. Often it was like trying to herd cats, but with their uninhibited communication style they formed the most amazingly synergistic teams I have ever encountered. Through all my travels, my observation is that to be truly effective we need the awareness to capitalise on our cultural strengths and compensate for our cultural weaknesses relative to the task in hand.

Then you joined PHI where your role has moved from Director Safety and Quality to Director Strategic Safety Development as the organisation grew globally. What drew you to the company?

At that stage, PHI (then HNZ) was a relatively small company, primarily operating single-engine helicopters. But they had a can-do, problem-solving, no-nonsense attitude that was matched with a solid approach to risk founded on operational and engineering excellence. All that the company required to emerge as worldclass was the development of the necessary corporate ‘systems’ e.g. for quality assurance, safety management and the like, and I was hired to assist in this. When Rob Cavers took over the Safety and Quality Department, this systematic development really took off, and what a wonderful success story it has been – there’s no doubting that PHI currently has world-class, industryleading safety and quality systems!

You studied an advanced degree in Industrial Psychology – what is that and how has it helped you in your career?

It’s the science of human factors – the fit between humans and their machines, teams organisations and operational environments. It’s where psychology, engineering and management science meet. Pure scientific theory is great, but it needs practical application and, to the best of my ability, I’ve endeavoured to interpret theory and apply its lessons to investigation, training and organisation development. For the past three years I’ve been focusing on resilience, the acceleration of expertise and the emerging science of complexity – the next great frontier.

What’s the most memorable moment of your career?

Like many pilots, it was my first solo flight, conducted off a grass airfield in an Air Force 1930’s T-6 Texan taildragger. Equally, was 20 years later in that my final air force flight was in the same aircraft at the same airfield, except I came within a hair’s breadth of ground looping and writing the aircraft off during landing! The lesson there is never get complacent, never let your guard down, the aircraft doesn’t care who or what you are, it just responds to your inputs good or bad.

There is no doubt that technology has transformed safety in the offshore helicopter world. In your view, what’s been the most significant change to benefit the industry?

It’s difficult to pinpoint a single piece of the jigsaw puzzle and complex technology breeds exotic failures. Aviation is a young profession – between my grandaddy being a Royal Flying Corps pilot, myself and the young pilots of today, that pretty much encompasses heavier than air flight. That’s the blink of an eye. My grandad survived World War I but in the beginning, one in four landings was deadstick (a forced landing caused by engine failure), there were minimal procedures and no supporting theory of flight – just terribly hard-won experience. A hundred years later and we have ultra-reliable machines equipped with sophisticated digital protections, decades of refinement in regulation, proceduralisation and flight theory, a vigorous growth in human factors appreciation and a widespread systems approach to organisational management. But I believe the most significant change is still bubbling just under the surface. Safety statistic curves have flattened out and while the Newtonian approach to organisations as ‘mechanisms’ has been incredibly successful, I believe the next step-change will be for organisations to embrace and embed the principles of complexity and view themselves as a living organism rather than something that operates predictably and dependently, like clockwork. There is huge scope for this.

How do you think PHI fosters a safety-first company culture?

That’s multi-faceted, I believe. On the one hand, it’s through a rigorous selection and hiring process that brings only top-class professionals into the organisation but fundamentally, safety culture is defined by the actions of a company’s management. In PHI, Executive and Senior Management have created the climate for safety through matching their personal behaviours to their published policies. They walk the talk, for example, in their positive response to occurrences, through the provision of the top class equipment and for vigorously supporting the development of industry-leading Safety and Quality systems.

In aviation, we are perpetual students.