"Is it really right and proper that the "up to" 10/40 or 20/80 figures can so easily be used deceive the EU into a blind acceptance without any line performance check ?"Of course it isn't, Walter. 'We' have had this discussion many, many times over and no matter how much feedback we give to our hierarchy about a two-tiered service, nothing gets done.
At a recent 'Roadshow' event, during the closing Q&A session,one of the really senior managers commented that they would be severely downsizing the contractors work-loads by next year. They will retain a certain amount for high-peak events only. I would suggest that the recent recruitment drive goes someway into backing up their intentions ??
There's a few things happening just recently, that will hopefully see improvements in BB terms. The North East have reverted back to BB being a Closed User Group (CUG). in other words, only engineers who want to perform BB faulting and have a proven track-record in this area, will actually pick up this type of work. For the last 7/8yrs, the remit has been to up-skill all and sundry making everyone fully multi-skilled. This is a huge debate and not for now, but suffice to say ...... multi-skilling doesn't lend itself to BB with a lot of people. I have it on good authority that Cumbria are to follow suit very soon, and (happy days) Lancs as well.
Also, REIN. I was chatting with a senior manager in the testing side of OR (The clever sods). Not too much detail but they are implementing a nationwide forum for REIN-only engineers, and hopefully providing a lot more assistance by way of advice and testing aids to help us poor sods on the front line that don't have the £30k worth of equipment that the Precision Test Officers have access to.
It might not mean much to the layman, but IMHO these are two huge advances in the way we operate.
