18 March, 2020
Meeting your needs in challenging times - a letter from the BCAA Director General
Dear Clients, Friends and Colleagues,
It is our aim to maintain our high standards of safety oversight of airworthiness and operations, whilst we continue to provide timely regulatory services.
As COVID-19 increasingly becomes a threat, we want to assure you that we are taking all possible precautions to protect both our staff and clients.
We recognise the need to respond effectively to the challenges created by emerging international restrictions imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
BCAA obligations and responsibilities continue to apply during this period and as such, we have now established alternative mechanisms to manage the risks presented, by those aspects of our work which cannot be completed as normal.
A strict travel policy for our employees is currently in place. We have canceled meetings with large gatherings and implemented video and telephone conferencing for all other meetings, again to do what we can to prevent the spread of the virus.
This means that we will not be travelling for routine audits, assessments, training or participation at overseas meetings or conferences. BCAA takes the consequences of this virus and the risks to our community extremely seriously.
Safety is always our number one priority which includes our clients and staff. To do this we are making changes to the way we work, such as working from home for most staff.
We plan to follow our oversight programme as closely as we can, by continuing to access aircraft and organisations where conditions permit and via ‘remote’ audits where restrictions prevent access. These essentially follow the same procedure as for on-site audits except we will ask industry to send us documents, information and evidence of compliance which we will then review and discuss via telephone calls or electronic means. This has worked well for us in the past as a temporary measure and enables oversight and contact with our industry to continue.
Staff well-being and client service remain our priority and accordingly our protocols have an emphasis on efficient remote working. Most of our Inspectors, in Airworthiness and Operations, work remotely on a regular basis and are familiar with the practicalities of working from home.
We are closely monitoring the COVID-19 developments and adhering to guidelines and updates from the Bermuda Government and the World Health Organization. We have a comprehensive business continuity plan in place to address the challenges and unpredictability of the current situation. Our business continuity protocols have been tested to ensure that we can continue to operate as normally as possible with minimal interruption to our client services.
Sincerely,
Thomas Dunstan
Director General