News
CHC and Sikorsky sending students to Safety & Quality Summit

Each year, CHC Helicopter, with support from Dr. Scott Shappell and Dr. Doug Wiegmann of HFACS Inc. provide aviation students with the opportunity to submit application essays for consideration for the Peter Gardiner Grant, named in honour of one of the earliest supporters of the CHC Safety & Quality Summit.

Headquartered in Irving, TX, CHC Helicopter’s Canadian office is located in Richmond, BC, which is also the worldwide headquarters of the maintenance arm Heli-One. Interested student applicants were asked to submit a 500-word essay tied to this year’s Summit theme: Building Safety at Every Level: Does this start at the top or with front line employees?

The winner of this year’s Sikorsky Safety Scholarship, which is in its second year, is Adam Tetzlaff, who is pursuing a degree in Aviation Technology at Seneca College near Toronto. In his submission, Tetzlaff discusses the importance of an organization having a robust safety management system, explaining that management buy-in to a strong safety culture is essential to establishing a mutual trust between organizational leadership and lower level employees, ultimately leading to a mutual investment in continued safety.

The winner of this year’s Peter Gardiner Grant is Lucca Carrasco Filippo, an Aeronautical Sciences student from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, studying at Unisul. In his application, Filippo stressed the importance of maintaining a just safety culture in an organization to help facilitate understanding behind human errors and accidents, noting that it takes a commitment from leadership to foster an environment where front line employees and management both can see human error as learning opportunities that can drive organizational growth and safety improvement.

The Peter Gardiner Grant and Sikorsky Safety Scholarship provides the winning students with full transport, accommodation and entry to the Safety & Quality Summit as a full delegate.

“Sikorsky is proud to congratulate Adam and award this scholarship, particularly during this industry-leading summit devoted entirely to safety and quality,” said Sikorsky’s vice president for quality and aviation safety, Jeff Hanke. “This conference brings together some of the top aviation leaders to provide innovative, problem-solving solutions for all aspects of safer rotorcraft operations, and at Sikorsky we have no higher priority than safety.”