Context
Pre-flight operations at an aircraft manufacturer is where schedule pressure meets zero tolerance for error. Working with Bombardier’s Pre-Flight Operations group and its Quality Director, our principal spent a season inside the workflow itself.
The problem
The group’s work — snags, Bombardier Operational Instructions, non-conformance reports, certifications — flowed through processes that were real but undocumented. You cannot systematically plan, measure, or improve what only exists as experience.
What we built
First, the unglamorous part: a deep operational investigation, tracing how each artifact was actually created, handled, and closed — not how the binder said it should be. That produced the requirements for a maintenance operating system for planning pre-flight tasks.
Delivery came in two layers: a Power BI-based communication tool, deployed, giving the group shared visibility into operational state; and an implementation plan for a full project-management toolbox — sequenced so the group could adopt it without disrupting live operations.
Key decisions
Process before software: the tooling succeeded because the investigation came first. Most operations software fails by automating a workflow nobody verified.
Outcome
Explicit, mapped pre-flight processes, a live communication tool, and an adoption roadmap — the method JES now applies to every operations-heavy engagement, from hangars to plant floors.