Overview: Driving Safety and Quality Leadership in the MRO Industry 

West Star Aviation, a leading MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) provider, has long prioritized safety and quality. With the Safety 24/7 initiative, West Star Aviation strives to embed a proactive safety culture across its organization. Central to this initiative is the VOCUS Safety Intelligence Platform, which plays a pivotal role in capturing, analyzing, and promoting safety insights to reduce risks and drive continuous improvement.

Challenge: Managing Safety and Quality in Tandem 

Historically, safety and quality management have been treated as separate disciplines, leading to fragmented processes and missed opportunities for holistic improvement. As Patrick Moylan, Chief Safety and Quality Officer at West Star Aviation, explains: “The common misconception is that quality and safety are separate entities, but in reality, quality issues often represent underlying risks.”

The challenge was clear:

• Build an integrated approach to manage safety and quality events as a unified process.
• Foster a culture where near-miss reporting, lesson-sharing, and continuous improvement become everyday practices.
• Move beyond traditional reactive models that focus on blame and embrace a Just Culture that encourages learning from mistakes.

The VOCUS Solution: One Platform, One Truth

West Star Aviation adopted the VOCUS Safety Intelligence Platform by Polaris Aero to consolidate safety and quality data in a single system, ensuring transparency and consistent communication across the organization’s multiple locations.

Key Features and Benefits:

• Ease of Reporting: The VOCUS Report philosophy is to keep it simple so that personnel are more likely to report.  As such, West Star Aviation’s over 3000 personnel at 20 locations can easily submit reports from their laptops or phones in minutes.
• Single Data Source: VOCUS provides one platform for all safety and quality event data, eliminating information silos and creating full organizational transparency.
• Enterprise-Wide Visibility: Trends and insights can be aggregated across facilities, enabling West Star Aviation to track patterns and act proactively on emerging risks.
• Actionable Insights: Over time, VOCUS enables causal factor trending, turning raw data into meaningful, actionable insights.
• Safety Promotion and Storytelling: Stories from VOCUS are shared across the company in weekly newsletters and monthly safety action meetings, making safety relatable and promoting cultural buy-in.

Implementation: Building Momentum through Quick Wins

West Star Aviation’s journey with VOCUS started with a focus on achieving quick wins. Each location was tasked with identifying five areas for improvement and focusing on resolving one as a starting point. This approach helped gain traction and created a positive momentum, described by Moylan as “a snowball rolling down a hill, gaining momentum after the initial push.”

Initially, efforts focused on robust event reporting, followed by trend analysis and sharing lessons learned across the organization. The Safety 24/7 initiative also introduced recognition programs such as safety coins and t-shirt promotions to reinforce positive safety behaviors.

“Recognition is rocket fuel for a strong safety culture. Behavior that’s recognized is behavior that gets repeated.” 

Cultural Impact and Safety Promotion

VOCUS became more than a data management tool; it evolved into a key driver of cultural transformation.

• Near Miss and Quality Escape Reporting: These are often the most valuable learning opportunities, as they were caught before actual events such as damage or injury occurred. These lessons help us avoid future, potentially more significant issues.
• Training and Safety Promotion: Ongoing education ensures consistency in how VOCUS is used across locations. Regular safety analysis training builds confidence and competency.
• Weekly Stories: Personal stories drawn from VOCUS reports resonate with employees, driving engagement and reinforcing the safety culture.

Results and Ongoing Journey

West Star Aviation has made significant progress in embedding safety and quality into its operations:

• Increased Reporting:  With the ease of reporting in VOCUS and West Star Aviation’s promotion of the new Safety 24/7 initiative, the organization has realized increased employee participation in safety reporting, including the submission of over 120 hazard reports. This allows proactive steps to be taken before incidents occur.
• Improved Data Transparency and Accountability: VOCUS provides automated Insights, Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs), and Registers, which is enabling Leadership to act on real-time data, creating a data-driven safety culture.
• Consistent Audits and Trend Management: VOCUS has simplified and standardized audit processes across the organization.  
• Proactive Risk Reduction: With VOCUS, the team can predict and address potential issues before they escalate, creating a resilient and adaptive safety system.

“Our leadership sees data as inherent to action,” Moylan notes. While the road hasn’t always been smooth, West Star Aviation continues to push forward. Moylan reflects, “It’s a journey, and we are grateful to have VOCUS and Polaris Aero as travel companions.”