Section 9.7

Communication

Within and between teams, work logging and recording, keeping up to date, dissemination of information, electronic communication.

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Communication failures — within a shift, between shifts, and between maintenance and flight crew — are one of the most common contributing factors in maintenance-related occurrences.
Shift handover must be explicit and in writing (not just verbal), covering incomplete work, deferred defects and any non-standard configuration left on the aircraft.
Accurate work logging and sign-off create the paper trail that lets the next person (or an investigator) reconstruct exactly what was done — an incomplete log is a communication failure even if the work itself was correct.
Keeping current with revised procedures, airworthiness directives and manual amendments is a communication responsibility of both the organisation (distributing updates) and the individual (reading them).
Electronic communication (email, electronic work packages) can lose the back-and-forth clarification a face-to-face handover provides — ambiguous electronic instructions should be verbally confirmed for safety-critical tasks.
⚠ Exam trap: an unrecorded verbal handover is a communication failure even when the work itself was done correctly — the technical log is what carries the information across the shift boundary.

Solved examples

A defect is verbally mentioned to the incoming shift lead but never entered in the technical log. The next shift does not action it. What failed?
Communication relied on an unrecorded verbal handover instead of the formal documented system — the technical log exists precisely so information survives a shift change even if a conversation is forgotten or misheard.

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