Safety
Foreign Object Debris Damage: Defining the Way Ahead
Manufacturers wanted to hear about the impacts of FOD events and operators believe they can do about them.

The impacts of foreign object debris (FOD) events and what manufacturers of detection products can do to prevent or ameliorate such events was the focus of this year’s Global FOD Prevention Conference, held at Washington Reagan National Airport on December 2. “We manufacturers already know FOD’s dangers and the capabilities of today’s detection and removal systems,” said Grant Bishop, COO of Singapore-based FOD detection equipment manufacturer Stratech Systems and the architect of the event. “We want to hear more about the wider impacts of FOD events and what more we can do about them.” However, he added, while FOD hazards are readily acknowledged, corrective actions are not the responsibility of a single entity. “Everyone agrees, but no one leads.”

The event included input from stakeholders in several fields: academia, government, insurance and finance.