The purpose of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is to ensure aviation service providers have a structured, formal process to manage safety, thereby reducing risk to the "transportation system."
Aviation SMS implementations are designed to continuously improve safety performance by:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Safety culture in aviation safety management systems (SMS) is usually defined as being the safety attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and values of employees in an organization. Unfortunately, such a high-level, conceptual definition of safety culture does not help safety manager address core personnel challenges in your organization's SMS.
In much of the SMS guidance material pushed out by regulatory agencies and standards setting bodies, such as ICAO's document 9859 Safety Management Manual, we see condensed definitions of "what is safety culture" with a very, easy-to-understand phrase: "employees actions regarding safety when nobody is watching." I find this definition enlightening, but still too generic. How do safety managers measure safety culture or affect the safety culture in their organization? We need more information in this definition in order to be useful to SMS practitioners.
Another way to approach the question, what is safety culture, is to break it into multiple definitions based on how it works in safety management systems.
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion, Safety Culture
Have you been considering the risks of moving your aviation safety management system (SMS) up to the cloud? In the past ten years, many aviation service providers have been moving their SMS data to the cloud for various reasons, but most make sound economic and business sense.
Topics: Risk Management Software
Aviation safety training and education is an essential building block for safety culture. Safety culture is understandably important for aviation service providers that are investing in aviation safety management systems (SMS). Without a healthy safety culture, the SMS will never deliver the expected results and moneys will be wasted.
Accountable executives and safety teams must consider whether poor performance of their aviation SMS is a result of lack of training, or a deeper, more sinister safety culture issue.
Safety training can make or break the successful performance of aviation SMS for:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
The objectives of every aviation safety management system (SMS) is to:
From a regulator's perspective, they are primarily interested in:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Whether safety professionals or upper management like it or not, a successful aviation safety management system (SMS) is dependent on safety culture. This fact hold true for every aviation industry segment, including:
Your company can have the best risk management processes and the most expensive aviation SMS database, but when your safety culture does not support the organization's SMS initiative, your company will never realize the full benefits of an aviation SMS. Furthermore, risk is not being managed properly.
Does this bear repeating? Unless you have a positive, trusting safety culture, you will be wasting a significant portion of your SMS investment. Money will be left laying on the table and management will miss out on the promised benefits of the aviation SMS.
With this in mind, how do you know whether your safety culture is either improving or in a slowly imperceptible decline?
Topics: Safety Culture
For most aviation service providers, the simple act of getting employees to report potential safety hazards is a constant challenge.
Expectations of the majority of employees are:
However, every employee has a responsibility to ensure operations remain safe for all stakeholders.
Is hazard identification and hazard reporting enough to ask from employees as they participate in your organization's safety initiatives?
What else should employees be doing for your required aviation safety management system (SMS)?
Without the support of all employees, the aviation SMS will never reach its full potential. Money will be left on the table - meaning that every successful SMS is dependent on safety culture and employee participation.
The raw ingredients in an aviation SMS come predominantly from safety reporting and audit activities. Employees are instrumental for providing these inputs by participating in effective safety reporting activities. Without employee participation, the organization can still have an SMS; however, the organization will never benefit fully from reduced risk and missed opportunities.
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
Aviation quality and compliance auditors use auditing software to measure compliance and to track corrective actions. IATA's IOSA program is a very good program to steer airlines toward an ICAO compliant safety management systems (SMS).
Quality, safety, and environmental management systems share many common elements and requirements. In fact, requirements for safety management systems have evolved from the quality management systems (QMS).
Looking at the two systems, one cannot but agree that SMS didn't evolve independently, but the framework was modeled after quality management systems.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Unless you have been living under a rock since November 2006, it is highly likely that you have heard about the required safety management systems (SMS) that were mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Aviation safety managers, especially at larger airlines and airports have considerable work to perform, including:
Topics: Risk Management Software
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