As the aviation services industry continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and our footprint continues to grow, the senior operational risk team held a two-day summit in London with the theme ‘realigning the compass’. It was an opportunity to take stock of where we are now, share projects in the pipeline and generate ideas for new initiatives.

Menzies has an exceptional safety record, better than our competitors, but we always need to look for ways to improve and keep improving. Mervyn Walker, Chief Operating Officer spoke about how our performance has plateaued and what we need to do to take the next step in our safety journey.

Yogesh Parekh, SVP Operational Risk shared more about projects that are currently underway, including new dashboards to enable managers to better plan and access data on the move, a global risk assessment library, improved automation within MORSE, a standardised approach to cargo screening and of course, MORSE Week #2. Looking to the future, John Geddes led a session on streamlining the MORSE Forum to make it more effective and bring more value. As a reminder, the MORSE forum is an evolution of the SSAG that is focused on people and promotes two way communication from all businesses, identifies emerging trends and helps shape the strategic direction. There will be more details to follow so watch this space!

The group heard from inspirational guest speaker Jason Anker, MBE who shared his story of the impact a workplace accident had on his life as well as on his family and friends. In his very moving session, Jason spoke about how tiny habits can turn into big changes and gave great insight into the decision-making that led to his accident.

On the second day, split into four groups to take part in a Dragon’s Den exercise. Each group developed a pitch for a significant risk initiative. After being grilled during their pitches to the Menzies Dragons – Mervyn Walker, Chief Operating Officer, Juliet Thomson, Chief People Officer and John Geddes, Chief Governance & Sustainability Officer & Company Secretary – three of the proposed initiatives have been signed off to proceed.

Rob Leech, Principle Product Director from EcoOnline, our MORSE platform, was the second guest speaker and covered technology developments in environmental, health and safety, including using AI to develop our risk radar.

Yogesh Parekh said, “Safety is our number one priority and as Menzies Aviation continues to grow, ensuring we are all aligned and moving in the same direction is more important than ever.”