Risk management processes in aviation safety management systems (SMS) offer service providers structure for:
For most aviation service providers, risk management involves the participation and cooperation of many stakeholder groups, including:
Without the involvement of all stakeholders, risk management activities at your organization will never realize their full potential. And we all remember the reason we have risk management procedures, correct?
Do you know why "The Accident" is coming?
The short answer to why "The Accident" is coming is because operators do not yet know how to monitor the effectiveness of risk controls. I have seen hazard registers in many aviation SMS that are created once and may be reviewed annually or every two to three years. Some hazard registers only are reviewed in anticipation of a scheduled SMS audit.
The hazard register is a list of all
Most of us understand the purpose of having formal risk management processes. SMS allows for the timely and repeatable elimination or reduction of risks to all affected stakeholders to an acceptable level. However, for too many managers, simply complying with regulatory or contractual obligations is their only motivation for formalizing their risk management procedures or participating in the mandatory SMS. These operators may have processes, but they are not being practiced.
Processes for the management of hazards and their associated risk are implemented to increase the organizational value or to meet service obligations. Regardless of the reasons behind implementing risk management processes, several critical elements must be observed.
The failure of any of the following elements will result in the failure of your SMS' risk management processes:
Every safety manager recognizes that hazard identification and risk management are the core components of every aviation SMS. The FAA succinctly describes the purpose of SMS is to:
"The FAA envisions operators being able to use all of the components of SMS to enhance a carrier’s ability to identify safety issues and spot trends before they result in a near-miss, incident, or accident. For this reason, the FAA is requiring carriers to develop and implement an SMS."
Source: Federal Register / Vol. 80, No. 5 / Thursday, January 8, 2015 / Rules and Regulations
We can logically see the reasoning behind SMS implementations. If you work in the aviation industry, we daily see preventable accidents and incidents. Why do these accidents and minor incidents continue to occur?
We can see why we need SMS. Operators have proven to be either unwilling or unable to reduce risk of their own volition. In the interest of "system safety," regulations have been created those mandate SMS implementations.
Risk management processes give us the tools and technologies to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). But having tools and technologies is not enough! Top management should be supporting these risk management procedures openly and frequently using these SMS-related vehicles:
From this list, we see that most activities fall under the SMS Safety Promotion component. Safety promotion is one of those very important SMS elements that receive little attention.
Why do you think safety promotion gets the least amount of attention in SMS? Is it because safety promotion in traditional safety programs seemed forced or contrived? Do safety promotion activities seem like a disingenuous attempt by management to influence employees?
You may have the best risk management processes on the planet. However, when employees don't trust management, or when employees don't know how to identify hazards and report safety concerns, your "best-in-class" risk management processes are simply worthless. Sure, they may please an auditor, but an SMS requires active participation from all of the stakeholders we listed at the beginning of this article.
Safety promotion has been considered the "forgotten" component, or the pillar that receives the least amount of attention in an implemented SMS. How management treats "safety promotion" in modern SMS reminds me of traditional safety programs. We hardly see a company that regularly effectively promotes SMS. Sure, the organization may have had good intentions at the beginning of the SMS implementation, but the safety culture is slow to develop and slow to see visible results. Consequently, safety promotion campaigns are short-lived in most aviation SMS.
Tell me that you disagree. Can you tell me that most companies have a vibrant, healthy safety culture that was spawned by consistent safety promotion efforts? Yes, there are a few companies that have the perseverance to faithfully promote the SMS year after year, but these are the minorities... the three to five percent group.
Employees need to understand what are hazards, and risks and how risk controls function in their area of operations. Unless employees know how to identify a hazard and how to report safety concerns, the SMS implementation is doomed to remain a "paper SMS" that only serves to "check the SMS box."
Aviation service providers may believe they have an effective SMS, illustrated by:
More than once, we have seen operators possessing both the abilities and the required risk management processes to manage reported safety concerns, however, they lacked timeliness. Their documented risk management processes were so detailed and painstaking that they took forever to close reported safety issues, thereby crippling the timely execution of treating their hazards, once they were identified.
Timeliness is incredibly important for:
When hazards and risks are not managed in a timely fashion, employees and contractors will assume management possesses apathetic attitudes to your SMS' risk management activities. Appearances are incredibly important. Appearances or perceptions of management's commitment to the SMS strongly affect safety culture.
How do employees view your SMS? Do they see management actively participating? This brings us back to the days before mandatory SMS when many operators had traditional safety programs. You may remember the old safety programs:
Well-defined, effective risk management processes identify and treat hazards in a timely fashion--while they are top of mind. Otherwise, new or recurring hazards are continually vying for preciously limited resources and the process fails. Also, safety cultures are affected because employees may see a "slow response" as a "no response."
Wherever appropriate, accountabilities and responsibilities for the identification, reporting, and management of hazards must be communicated and documented. Best practices will have employees and managers review their accountabilities and responsibilities on an annual basis. This activity will be documented and serve as another "safety promotion" activity.
For most aviation SMS, these accountabilities and responsibilities include:
For best results, accountabilities and responsibilities should be posted where all employees can review not only their accountabilities and responsibilities but also the accountabilities and responsibilities of other employees and stakeholders, such as:
The first steps for implementing an aviation SMS and its risk management processes are:
Once you have accomplished these tasks, you will have to determine the best way to train the organization to identify and treat hazards in a timely fashion. For most organizations, we see that the "train the trainer" concept is most widely accepted. "Train the trainer" is cost-effective and ensures that the safety team is more knowledgeable regarding the entire hazard management system.
All educators understand the concept that "you really don't understand a subject well unless you can teach it."
Risk management training should be developed for different user groups, dependent upon the role they play in the hazard management system. These groups may include:
Safety training proves effective for short-term gains in the aviation SMS; however, safety managers must continue to stoke the fire to ensure the developing risk management mindset and extant safety culture does not die on the vine.
Too often, we see aviation service providers spend considerable time and money developing their hazard management procedures...
Aviation SMS will slowly die when:
Most often, top management is not actively monitoring SMS performance. Nor is top management looking to identify a sick safety program unless a serious accident occurs.
Top management is busy focusing their energies on increasing the financial value of their company or satisfying a board's interests.
Due to humans' tendency to forget, safety managers must keep hazard identification and safety reporting at the top of everyone's minds. This can be accomplished using:
It is easier to keep everyone interested in the aviation SMS than it is to try to revive interest after everyone has tuned out of "the program."
As we have seen, managing hazards and safety concerns is not simply about waiting for accidents to happen and then reacting. There are several critical elements to effective risk management programs.
We can easily see that when one element is neglected, your risk management system will easily fail, which leaves you with an impotent SMS.
A common failure of aviation SMS can be averted early on in the SMS implementation process. We frequently see aviation service providers outgrow their SMS data management facilities. At the beginning of SMS implementation, safety managers are busy getting top management support and learning SMS requirements. There is little consideration as to what the SMS documentation requirements are.
Consequently, we see SMS data managed completely in paper and spreadsheets. Occasionally, we see a point solution or software developed for another operational process converted to manage SMS data.
Timely completion of SMS risk management activities is often attributed to SMS tools. When an operator has the right tool for the job, the task becomes much easier to manage. Imagine that you have a hammer and you need to dig a hole. Sure, you could dig the hole with a hammer, but a shovel or a backhoe would be better suited to accomplish the task. You can think of a spreadsheet SMS as the hammer. There are better ways to manage SMS data and make the safety team more effective.
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Last updated March 2024.