CHIRP: Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme (aviation and maritime)

Summary

CHIRP was formed in 1982 as a result of a joint initiative between the Chief Scientific Officer Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Chief Medical Officer CAA and the Commandant Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM).  

The programme was based on the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) that had been formed in the United States of America in 1976 under the management of National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). 

Content

CHIRP’s Aviation Programme improves safety in the air by providing a totally independent confidential reporting system for all individuals involved in aviation in UK’s airspace. 

The fundamental principle underpinning CHIRP is that all reports are treated in absolute confidence in order that reporters’ identities are protected – any associated information and concerns or experiences are only communicated to external agencies and organisations with the agreement of the reporter and then only in a disidentified format to protect their anonymity.

CHIRP is primarily concerned with safety-related reports about Human Factors and/or Just Culture/Reporting Culture issues.  Such reports may include but are not confined to: human skills, performance and training; rules, procedures and regulations; the design and use of aircraft and equipment; communication; workplaces, manpower, organisation and management.

CHIRP also provides an independent confidential reporting function for reporting Bullying, Harassment, Discrimination and Victimisation (BHDV). It is recognised that one-off or repeated instances of BHDV can have a deleterious effect on individual performance, mental health, stress and company culture, and that these in themselves can have second-order safety implications. In conjunction with the CAA, CHIRP has therefore implemented a BHDV reporting function that will log received reports and associated information within the CHIRP confidential database. Only CHIRP staff will have access to these details, there is no connectivity to CAA systems. CHIRP has no specific expertise or resources to investigate reports about BHDV and our role is to anonymously aggregate the data from associated reports to build a picture of the prevalence of BHDV in the aviation sector, the human factor and safety impacts this may have, and explore improvements that might be made.

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