SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Management Incentives to Know If Aviation SMS Management Is Efficient

Every person in a company should be concerned if their aviation safety management system (SMS) management is efficient and working as designed.

Management efficiency in aviation SMS implementations has significant stakes for everyone in the organization, as well as customers who use the company’s services.

What Is Confidence in Aviation Safety Programs?

Confidence in aviation safety management systems (SMS) is trust that the SMS implementation fulfills its obligations. The obligations of SMS include, of course, safety. But they don’t just include safety. The fact is that aviation SMS implementations that set out to only satisfy good-looking safety data or regulatory compliance will plateau or even implode before long.

Bringing Life to a System

It’s easy to get lost in the bureaucracy side of aviation safety management systems' (SMS):

• Policies and procedures;
• Safety accountabilities;
• SMS training;
• Risk management processes;
• Management of change;
• SMS documentation requirements;
• Demonstrating continuous improvement;
• And so on

Vendors As Part of Aviation SMS Initiatives

Aviation safety managers, especially at larger airlines and airports have considerable work to perform, including:

• Learning aviation safety management system (SMS) requirements;
• Determining which SMS elements already exist in the organization;
• Documenting a plan to implement missing SMS elements; and
• Bringing managers and employees into alignment for SMS compliance.

Safety managers often become so engrossed in SMS activities that they overlook vendors, subcontractors and business partners. These associated organizations also fall under scrutiny when the SMS auditors come to assess regulatory and/or contractual compliance with SMS requirements.

Legacy Safety Reporting Systems Increase Auditing & Financial Risk

Aviation safety managers commonly tell me that audits become much less painful after switching over to their new aviation safety management system (SMS) database software.

This doesn't mean that their company always passes audits without findings, but auditors love that all SMS documentation requirements are managed within one centralized data management system instead of being scattered around in:

Idle Time Doesn’t Have to Be Dreaded

Aviation safety managers are hardworking professionals, and their daily work schedules can be hectic, challenging, and extremely busy. But for many safety officers – and I’m guessing you may be one of them – there may be times when things become pretty quiet on the "SMS front", as if everything is under control...finally. And a big sigh of relief comes.

Then you suddenly find yourself rubbing your hands together, wondering how to best spend your time. What can I do to add value to our aviation safety management system (SMS)?

Should I work on strengthening our safety culture? or

Maybe I should tidy up the SMS' documentation so an auditor won't have any concerns about how our reported safety issues have been treated?

The Importance of This Risk Management Chart

If your company is like other aviation service providers, you will have a particular safety issue keep coming back time and again. Corrective actions may be implemented or the safety issue isn't severe enough to warrant too much attention. Your recurring safety issue may be:

• Employee fall protection not used;
• Crew-member fatigue;
• Crew not qualified for mission; or
• Ineffective substance abuse monitoring.

Is your recurring safety issue in the above list? Many of you will relate to crew-member fatigue as your top recurring safety issue. This may be due to:

• Improper crew scheduling;
• Unplanned layovers;
• Time-zone changes; or
• Long duty days.

How do you identify and document all the contributing factors that are related to your top recurring safety issues? What was the root causes? Do you know? Since this is a recurring safety issue, the root causes are obviously not being dealt with properly. How are you dealing with root causes in your risk management processes? Are they documented? Can management make fact-based decisions based on this documented information?

The Method of Talking about a Safety Management System

In another post about safety management systems for the layman, I discussed some of the groundwork for what an aviation safety management system (SMS) is and who uses it.

But as a good friend of mine who is a safety inspector told me – and this is true, “I don’t tell people what I do. I just tell people I’m a Civil Engineer because that’s

What Is Risk Assessment?

In November 2006, ICAO mandated that all member states implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS). One objective was to provide aviation service providers with a standardized approach to managing safety.

During the aviation SMS implementation, operators must create and maintain a formal process of risk analysis and risk assessment in order to keep safety performance at an acceptable level of safety (ALoS). This process is “formal” in the sense that this process needs to be documented and reviewed.

Performing risk assessments in aviation SMS may start with hazard identification and the subsequent hazard reporting activity. Alternatively, a management of change project may have initiated a system review that identified either existing hazards or new hazards.

Certification vs. Qualification

Last year my wife went to the dentist to have a filling put into one of her teeth. She had severe pain for several days, went back to the dentist and found out that he had put the filling in backward. He replaced it with a new filling but the next day it fell out of her tooth.