A4.1.6 Competencies

In today's highly reliable aviation system, it is impossible to foresee all potential threats and safety events. The next safety event may be completely unexpected or even unforeseeable. EBT addresses this by moving from pure scenario-based training, to prioritizing the development and assessment of core competencies, leading to better training outcomes. Mastering a finite number of defined competencies will allow a pilot to manage previously unseen potentially dangerous situations in flight.

#The unforeseeability premise

The opening claim is the operational case for competency-based training. In a highly reliable aviation system, the next safety event is, by construction, the one that has not yet been anticipated; if it had been anticipated, the system reliability would have removed it. A training programme designed exclusively around historical events has nothing to say about the next event because the next event is, by hypothesis, novel.

Competency-based training addresses this by teaching the underlying capabilities (the competencies) the crew uses to manage any event, including events the curriculum designers did not foresee. The catalogue of competencies is finite; the catalogue of events the competencies can address is open-ended. That is the operational payoff of the approach.

#What changes in instructor practice

EBT implementation involves a change in the way training is approached. Two related shifts:

• Critical events are repurposed as vehicles, not as targets. EBT does not simply replace a sometimes-outdated set of critical events with a new set; instead, it uses the scenario-based events as a means to develop and assess crew performance across the range of necessary defined competencies. The same scenario can serve different competency-development targets depending on the crew's diagnostic profile from the evaluation phase; the scenario is the vehicle, the competencies are the cargo.
• Instructor focus shifts to root-cause analysis. EBT refocuses the instructor onto analysis of the root causes of unsuccessfully flown manoeuvres in order to correct inappropriate actions, rather than simply asking a pilot to repeat a manoeuvre with no real understanding of why it was not successfully flown in the first instance. Repeating a manoeuvre that did not work the first time, without analysis of why it did not work, will produce the same failure mode the second time and embed it as a habit; analysis of the root cause produces a corrective intervention that addresses the underlying competency gap, after which the manoeuvre can be repeated productively.

#Collapsing the technical / non-technical split

EBT uses a single set of core competencies. The legacy distinction between technical skills (handling, procedures, systems knowledge) and non-technical skills (communication, decision-making, leadership and teamwork, the legacy CRM content) is, in EBT terms, an unnecessary complication. Successful safe and efficient operations require an appropriate blend of both, and the operational competencies the crew exercises in flight do not respect the technical / non-technical line.

The key competencies identified in EBT therefore encompass what were previously termed both technical and non-technical knowledge, skills and attitudes, aligning the training content with the actual competencies necessary in the contemporary aviation context. The single competency set is embedded in the threat and error management concept: the competencies are operationalised against the threats and errors the crew encounters, with the TEM frame supplying the operational context.

The substantive nine-competency catalogue (the eight ICAO core competencies plus Appendix 4's KNO addition) and its behavioural-indicator expansion is reproduced in A4.D Core Competencies of the EBT Instructors and Examiners Handbook; the five-grade word-picture rubric that turns the indicators into a graded assessment is in A4.E Performance Grades.

#The "below standard" rule

#Connections

• A4.1.5 Instructors and Examiners. The previous section, whose instructor-bar argument the fault-analysis selection criterion in this section operationalises.
• A4.2.1 Guidance for Examiners. Puts the competency-based session structure into operation.
• EBT. The methodology this competency argument supports.
• Core competencies. The competency framework this section names.
• KNO. Appendix 4's ninth competency, added to the eight ICAO core competencies.
• Behavioural indicators. The observable evidence each competency grade has to be supported by.
• Fault analysis. The root-cause discipline EBT instructor selection should weight.
• Threat and error management. The frame inside which the competencies are operationalised.
• ICAO-9995 Conduct of EBT. The standards-body chapter that operationalises the same competency-and-behavioural-indicator approach.
• A4.D Core Competencies. The nine-competency catalogue and behavioural-indicator expansion.
• A4.E Performance Grades. The five-grade word-picture rubric used to assess the competencies.