3G Aviation specialise in flight crew training, simulator training and maintenance crew training for the Hercules C130 military aircraft and the Hercules L382 civilian aircraft. There is 99% commonality between the two aircraft.
Gordon King is the managing director and he is a flight crew and maintenance crew instructor. All his operators are experienced instructors and maintenance engineers.
The company works on a global scale with clients in Portugal, Dubai, Cameroon, Holland and Belgium.
One of the offshoots the company has developed is in human factors training. This area of expertise aims to mitigate risk and error management. It is known as 3G Human Factors. This concentrates on situation awareness which can be broken down into
1. Perceiving a problem
2. Perceiving a problem and responding to it
3. Perceiving a problem, responding to it and seeing it coming.
An example of this would be someone driving along the M4, seeing J16 turnoff ahead, knowing this will be followed by J16 turn-on slip road and foreseeing a large lorry entering the motorway
Another area where 3G Human Factors skillsets are in demand is in reducing health care claims. In this country these claims amount to £2 billion/year and the figure is increasing exponentially.
The ethos is to save lives, associated claims, reputations and money, concentrating on often overly hierarchical relations between team members.
The aircraft industry went through an epiphany following a completely avoidable collision between two Boeing 747 aircraft in 1977. This lead to a catastrophic loss of life, caused by a KLM flight taking off without receiving clearance from air traffic control and impacting with a Pan-Am flight waiting at the other end of the same runway in very poor visibility.
Human factors training is also used to great effect in minimising potential risks in the nuclear, oil, rail, bomb disposal and fire fighting areas.
In health care the techniques are needed but not used sufficiently. 3G Human Factors is seeking to expand further into this critical area.
