Air Safety Manager
Devon Air Ambulance

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My name is Rob.

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I have been working for Devon Air Ambulance for about three months now.

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And I’m the air safety manager.

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It’s a really nice, interesting, varied job – bit of office time.

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But I also get out and about and I get to go and see airplanes

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and the crews, which is good fun. Being around aviation, is great

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but actually the nicest bit is the people

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I have to get out and about and speak to people.

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You can’t be a safety manager sitting at a desk.

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You do have to balance it and build the trust and confidence

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of people in the organization so you can understand what’s wrong.

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At school, I loved sport as well, so I played rugby,

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played basketball, I was a swimmer.

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I learned a lot, I think, from sport, which was really helpful.

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It’s great for team building.

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Learning to be a follower as well as perhaps being a leader.

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When I got

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to further on in school in my A-levels, I chose to do

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I had an inkling I wanted to go and do an engineering degree,

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but about that time I also start to get really interested in the Royal Air Force.

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Flying for me was something I thought I wanted to do,

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and I was very lucky that I was able to get sponsored through university.

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So I did an engineering degree and that then led to me joining the Air Force.

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The one thing I would say with the Air Force

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was they offered me lots of opportunities to develop new skills.

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I flew C-130 transport aircraft, commanded a squadron, but also did various

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what I would call desk jobs, office type jobs in the latter part of my career.

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That was when I branched into safety, which actually was by accident rather

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than by design.

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But I spent

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four years working as a safety regulator.

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If you’d asked me when I was younger in the middle point of my RAF career,

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whether that was something I’d have done, I think I’d have laughed and gone ‘no way’.

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For me, it was really interesting.

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I was a bit reluctant to start, but actually, as I got into the job,

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I realized two things. One, I really quite enjoyed

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trying to understand what wasn’t right and the things that needed to be fixed.

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And I also seems to be quite good at actually understanding the problems.

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Communication is absolutely fundamental, whether that’s written communication

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or the ability to relate to different people in the organization.

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In my role, I have to talk to the very top of the shop to talk to the boss

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and advise her of the things that are going well

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and the things that maybe aren’t so good so that we can perhaps make changes.

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But similarly, I have to talk to all the people across the organization,

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so the ability to communicate and to listen is really, really important.

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I don’t think you could do the job without that particular skill.

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What I would say is life is rarely going to run

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to the plan that you might have. Try and be adaptable.

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You might find you change your mind about the direction you want to go in.

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So keep your options open

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where you can, because that’s always a good thing to do.

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And when life throws up those unexpected

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opportunities, have a think about it because you never know.

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It might take you down a really interesting pathway.