Enhance SMS Oversight with Awareness

Knowing your aviation safety management system (SMS) is much like going on an extended backpacking trip.

To be safe, you need to be aware of:

• Your environment
• Your limitations;
• Your risk management tools; and
• Basically, have a plan for as many scenarios as you can think of.

To enhance your SMS risk management oversight, it is a matter of improving how aware of these things you are. It means asking a lot of “what if” questions and being honest about how well your aviation risk management efforts could address that situation. It also means asking yourself two important questions:

1. Are we doing too much (more than required)? And
2. Are we doing enough to satisfy SMS requirements?

1 – Understand Your SMS' Risk Management Philosophy vs Risk Appetite

Again I like the metaphor of going on an extended trek. You have a destination (goal) and a major part of your daily practices are balancing the amount of risk you are willing to take to get there. The more you focus on how quickly you get there – i.e. performance – the more you open yourself up to risk.

The same is true in aviation safety management. The aviation industry is essentially a service industry, and providing a quality experience for customers is essential for businesses to survive. At the same time, your organization has to efficiently and safely deliver quality service.

Aviation risk management philosophy vs risk appetite is basically your:

• Organization's stance on what its safety philosophy is (i.e. commitment to safety); versus
• How much risk your organization is willing while delivering services and satisfying aviation SMS requirements.

And for those of you who are saying that you accept “as little risk as possible,” then you’re kidding yourself. All organizations accept risk by cutting corners for the sake of efficiency. It’s inescapable. How often are you on the ground floor evaluating front-line employees’ safety practices? The “as little risk as possible” response would be that you are on the ground floor every day.

But we both know that doesn’t happen. It’s inefficient, and there are better ways to monitor employee safety performance. Being safe in an aviation SMS – or any system for that matter – involves being extremely honest about how much and WHERE you are willing to accept risk in order to accomplish your goals.

By taking an honest appraisal of your risk appetite, you should ultimately circle back and ask yourself the two important questions:

1. Are we putting too much effort into our SMS? And
2. Are we doing enough to satisfy SMS requirements?

Understanding management's viewpoint toward safety versus production helps to ensure that your SMS goals are satisfying management's mission.

Related Aviation SMS Implementation Articles

• How to Review Your Aviation Safety Risk Management Procedures
• How to Earn Top Management Support for Aviation SMS
• Your Risk Management Attitude, Risk Response, and Emotional Intelligence

2 – Document Actual Risk Management Practices

The ideal aviation SMS risk management strategy would always feature documentation that reflects the reality of risk management processes. Aviation risk management happens through a process of:

1. Promotion and awareness;
2. Identifying safety hazards;
3. Risk assessment;
4. Reviewing controls, including detective and corrective/preventive actions;
5. Implementation of controls; and
6. Monitoring of control performance.

But the reality is that organizations all function differently and different phases of risk management are often disproportionately focused upon. There may be times when your safety team places too much emphasis on one process that adds little value to the entire risk management process. We have all seen this phenomenon in action -- we usually call these tasks "busy work" and they may make no sense to the safety team, but the team may be locked into performing this process because "this is the way we've always done it."

Preparing for incidents, and practicing proactive aviation risk management requires having accurate policies and procedures. The more accurate they are, the better management can plan accordingly, just as having a more accurate map allows one to travel more efficiently.

Documenting your organization's actual risk management workflow is essentially taking inventory of your risk management processes. One good way to document is to create a flowchart of how issues are managed both in terms of:

• the steps that happen and
• the time on each step.

It’s not an easy undertaking to document all your risk management processes. Documenting actual risk management practice is tedious, time-consuming, and probably boring for many managers.

But it’s extremely important and can be fun if you look at it as a true exploration of how your SMS functions.

3 – Reevaluate Management’s Role in Your Aviation SMS

Environments are constantly changing. Organizations must evolve and operating processes must also evolve to adapt to the changing environment. Regulatory SMS requirements are an example of such an environmental change the aviation industry has experienced since 2006.

Adhering to the traditionally rigid, top-down approach of aviation SMS risk management is unrealistic and even dangerous. In smaller or new, immature aviation safety management systems, such an approach is more feasible, but what about:

• When do organizations become larger?
• When organizations have highly sophisticated levels of safety culture and risk management processes, like those required by unions or ASAP programs? Or
• When organizations are highly reliant on contractors or third parties to accomplish their mission?

At any point in the life of a safety program, many things could happen that would change management’s role in its safety program. Inadaptable SMS programs, management’s role will be more supportive and maintain the efforts of front-line employees. In new programs, managers must spearhead safety promotional efforts or the SMS will certainly fail.

The point is that as dynamics in the system change, management will need to change accordingly, and that can only happen by evaluating and reevaluating their current role in the program’s risk management processes vs what the organization currently needs most.

An SMS is never a “one shoe fits all” endeavor. Rigidly sticking to one type of relationship in your management approach and the SMS' risk management efforts are short-sighted.

Final Thought: Continuous Improvement

Too often continuous improvement gets touted as focusing disproportionately on more visually gratifying areas that can be charted and graphed. But these are often merely symptoms of genuine continuous improvement, which usually happens in the messier, more nebulous areas of

• human communication,
• self-awareness,
• improved use of aviation safety tools, and
• better understanding of the current safety environment.

Enhancing SMS oversight requires an absolute commitment to continuous improvement. Or more simply put, continuous improvement is the enhancement of SMS capabilities.

SMS oversight activities will change over time, based on which phase you are in your SMS implementation. Management's role will also subsequently change. It is helpful that you understand management's business objectives and regularly ask yourself:

1. Are we putting too much effort into our SMS? And
2. Are we doing enough to satisfy SMS requirements?

Related Aviation SMS Articles

• How to Prove That Your Aviation SMS Is Practicing Continuous Improvement
• The Truth about SMS Continuous Improvement and KPIs - with Free KPI Resources
• How to Be Compliant with Continuous Improvement of SMS

Need Help with Your Aviation SMS?

Are your SMS processes ill-defined?

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When hazards are identified, or when an event occurs, your safety program must be prepared.

How do you deal with:

• accidents;
• incidents; or mere
• irregularities?

Depending on the type of issue, your process is probably different. Or is it? We find many safety managers benefit from reviewing their risk management workflows.

Last updated in October 2023.