Implementing Competency-Based Training and Assessment in Aviation

Norman MacLeod was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Air Force Education and Training Branch in 1977. He was trained in the use of Instructional Systems Design and has applied that methodology extensively to various training projects, including a redesign of the RAF C-130 transport aircraft. He was a Leadership Instructor at the RAF College, Cranwell; the Chief Instructor at the RAF School of Instructional Techniques; commanded a Training School and was the Staff Officer responsible for training policy for all ground personnel. In 1994, he set up his own consultancy delivering Crew Resource Management Training. He was an approved UK CAA CRM facilitator and a CRM Instructor Examiner. He has worked in all types of aviation, including rotary wing, business jets, low-cost carriers and legacy airlines. He has been involved in AQP development for a major US carrier and initiated the first ATQP workshop in Europe in 2007. Most recently, he was the Human Factors Manager for Cathay Pacific Airways in Hong Kong. He has published extensively on aspects of aviation training design, and in 2021, published the first book to apply a competence approach to pilot CRM.