In an environment where safety, governance, and operational performance are under constant scrutiny, experience matters.
KMF's principals have held the roles our clients hold now: executive accountability for the regulatory oversight of Australia's certified aviation organisations; executive roles in Commonwealth transport safety and security across aviation and maritime; chief operating officer in airline and special mission aviation, and training and checking airline crews. Clients work directly with those people, not with a junior team behind them.
We apply that experience to the questions boards and accountable executives actually face: whether an operation will stand up to regulatory scrutiny, whether it is performing as it should, and whether a major project or contract will deliver what was promised.
Clients work directly with the principals.
Where an engagement needs additional capability, such as aviation law, engineering or aviation medicine, we bring in specialists for that assignment. We tell you who they are and why before they start, we involve them only with your agreement, and we hold them to the same confidentiality and conflicts terms we work under. The principals remain accountable for the work and its quality.
“KMF Advisory sits between the sole practitioner and the large consultancy. Clients work directly with two principals who have held accountable roles themselves, from diagnosis through to implementation, with the depth of senior judgement and the discretion of a small firm.”
Craig Martin | Director
Craig Martin
Director
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Craig has worked in aviation from all sides of the table, as a regulator, operations executive, pilot and advisor across more than three decades.
At the Civil Aviation Safety Authority he was Executive Manager of the Regulatory Oversight Division, accountable for regulatory entry control and the safety surveillance of every certified aviation organisation operating in and to Australia, and he led CASA's Regulatory Services and Surveillance Transformation Program.
In industry he has been chief operating officer in airline and special mission aviation, an airline senior check and training captain, and a senior air transport safety and risk manager. He took the Boeing 777 into service with two major carriers and holds CASA Flight Examiner ratings across multiple Boeing wide-body types.
Clients engage Craig on the matters that are hardest to be honest about: regulatory escalation, organisational underperformance, distressed operations, projects that have stopped delivering, and the accountability questions that follow.
Regulatory oversight and surveillance
Aviation safety and assurance
Airline operations and technical standards
Strategic risk and governance
Peter White | ML MBE OAM MCS
Director
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He has held senior roles in national security, law enforcement and regulatory operations in Australia, the Pacific, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, including government transport infrastructure development in Papua New Guinea. His particular focus is organisational change in institutions under scrutiny: rebuilding a regulatory, security or operational function after it has been found wanting and supporting the organisation during this change.
He is a Member of the Order of the British Empire, a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia, and a Member of the Order of Logohu, conferred by the Government of Papua New Guinea.
He holds commendations for bravery, investigative excellence, organisational reform and community service. His qualifications include a BSc (Hons), an MBA and postgraduate qualifications.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders and President of the Australian Bravery Association, which recognises Australians who have acted with courage in the service of others.
Clients engage Peter where the problem is institutional rather than technical: a function that has lost the confidence of its regulator, its minister or its board, and has to earn it back.
Transport security regulation
Strategic organisational change
Safety and security investigation
Executive advisory
What We Do…
Our work falls into three lines: regulatory and safety assurance, from safety management systems to regulatory approvals and enforcement responses; operating performance and governance; and project, contract and assurance advisory. Separately, our principals provide independent review and expert evidence, where our duty is to the court or tribunal, not to the party that engages us.
Aeromedical
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Aeromedical services occupy the space where an aviation safety obligation meets a clinical service obligation. The operating model is negotiated between an operator, a health jurisdiction and a funder: accountability is shared, but the consequences of failure are not. We advise operators, boards and contracting jurisdictions on service design and entry into service, safety and governance frameworks, base and facility development, contractual and workforce arrangements, and the key personnel appointments these services depend on.
Airlines
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Airline boards usually call us at a point of change. Sometimes the operation has outgrown the organisation running it. Sometimes a risk has emerged that existing systems were not built to detect. Sometimes the environment around the airline has shifted, through a fleet transition, a new market, regulatory change, or financial pressure. An airline's obligations grow with the complexity of its operation, and the airlines that struggle are usually those whose structure, systems and leadership have not kept pace with change. Craig Martin has been an airline chief operating officer and took the Boeing 777 into service with two major carriers. We advise airline boards, executives and investors on operating performance, governance, regulatory escalation and due diligence, and act for foreign carriers establishing operations into Australia under Part 129 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations.
Special Mission Aviation
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Aerial firefighting, search and rescue, surveillance, para-public and law enforcement support are flown to contracted standards that sit on top of the civil aviation regulations, often in conditions the regulations were not principally written for. Regulatory compliance and contractual conformance are different things, and a certificate to operate demonstrates only the first. We help operators demonstrate both and help the agencies contracting the capability assure what they are paying for.
Uncrewed Systems
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A remotely piloted aircraft operator’s certificate (ReOC) authorises the operations it covers; it does not, by itself, make the holder an aviation organisation. With CASA now assessing complex operations using its AusSORA methodology and Airservices building a national drone traffic management system, the operators that grow will be those whose safety management, accountability and records would stand up to the scrutiny CASA applies to air operators. Craig Martin and Peter White led that scrutiny as CASA Executive Managers, Regulatory Oversight.
We advise operators and manufacturers on approvals for beyond visual line of sight, large and novel operations, including an approvals pathway for long-range RPAS operations over the high seas. We advise owners and investors on the uncrewed businesses they hold or are buying, and agencies on what to require of the operators they contract.
Transport and Maritime Safety and Security
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Our transport security and maritime advice rests on executive experience in Commonwealth and international transport security regulation across aviation and maritime.
The problem is the one described under special mission aviation: obligations demonstrated on paper rather than in practice, and contracted work that expects a standard of assurance the certificate was never designed to provide. We advise industry participants on security programs, compliance, assurance and organisational change.
Australia, the Pacific and Southeast Asia
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Transport regulation across the region is being asked to enable more than it was originally built for: growing traffic, rising disaster response and aeromedical demands, and accelerating infrastructure investment, often overseen by very small national authorities.
The constraint is rarely willingness; it is oversight capacity and system design.
Peter White has worked with the Government of Papua New Guinea on transport matters, including aviation infrastructure support, and has been recognised by PNG as a Member of the Order of Logohu. Donor-funded transport infrastructure, whether through the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific or multilateral lenders, carries assurance requirements as a condition of funding, the same delivery assurance problem we address at home.
Effective work in the region is as much institutional and cultural as technical, and we approach it that way.
