The Airwork Group, New Zealand's largest general aviation organisation, is working with software firm Ideagen on a project that aims to enhance safety management, and particularly safety reporting. Ideagen's Coruson is being rolled out to help modernise overall safety and risk management processes to replace a number of Airwork's current systems.

Coruson will be used by around 500 members of staff across New Zealand, Australia and around the world as a software solution for safety management, specifically to record safety issues and simplify operational performance reports for management. It will also be adopted as a central system for the continuous monitoring of operational risk.

Introducing Coruson was a logical decision for Airwork following the requirement by the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand for all aviation businesses to have an approved SMS. Following on from the successful implementation of its NZ industry-leading SMS system, Airwork identified the need for improved SMS monitoring and risk elevation became essential.

Airwork's helicopter commercial manager Scott McGregor says: “This is an exciting project that will help us take safety management to the next level and significantly improve our risk awareness and mitigation processes. Airwork is a medium to large business with a lot of systems and complexity. We quickly realised that if we wanted the business to be operating a world-class SMS system, we needed to implement an industry-leading system such as Coruson.”

The Airwork Group focuses on fixed-wing and helicopter maintenance, aircraft leasing, flight operations and works with both private and public entities. It currently has a fleet of approximately 50 helicopters and 30 737/757 freighters.

Coruson will be rolled out across Airwork's entire rotor and fixed wing businesses with an emphasis on reporting, audit and the safety investigation functionalities of the system, including risk. “We are all about making safety easy, as it's easy to make safety hard,” continues McGregor.

Malcolm Cole, Coruson project lead from Airwork's technology team, adds: “Following a detailed RFP process, Airwork selected Ideagen primarily as a result of its aviation industry experience and impressive list of customers. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) framework was a benefit to Airwork, which easily fits with our IT strategy.”

Ideagen's software is used by more than 300 aviation organisations, and counts the likes of Emirates, KLM and British Airways amongst its client base. In the helicopter industry, it works with Bristow, Babcock and PHI Inc.