SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What Is Proactive Risk Management

Proactive risk management for safety managers involves risk management activities that are dedicated to recognizing potential concerns before those concerns actualize. Proactive risk management does this by:

• Identifying trends in important safety data; and

Hazard Reporting Process Is for More than Just Hazards

The idea of “hazard reporting” is a bit inaccurate because employees should be reporting more than just hazards.

Hazards are just one type of concern that employees should report. When we are talking about hazard reporting, what we are really talking about is “issue reporting.”

Issue reporting includes many levels of concerns, such as:

• Identified root causes in the operational environment;
• Hazardous sources and other potentially dangerous conditions;

Definition of Risk

Risk, in its general form, is what is most often cited when discussing the definition of risk, and the idea of risk.

Risk in general is:

• The composite of severity and likelihood used to rank risk;
• Used in Risk Assessment; and
• Generally spoken in the context of, “The risk of [something bad].”

What Is Reactive Risk Management in Aviation SMS

Reactive risk management in aviation SMS is a technique that, mainly, involves the ability to respond to safety issues (or other types of issues, such as compliance, quality, etc.).

Reactive management is a response based approach to risk.

Practically, this means that anytime managers or front-line employees respond to an active threat in the operational environment (front-line employees)

Building Hazard Reporting Culture Through Convenience

If you want to improve your aviation SMS program’s hazard reporting culture, the first thing you should do is to see if you can make hazard reporting easier.

“Easier” is a tricky word.

Are manual hazard reporting forms easy? The long answer begins with: it depends on the situation. The short answer is: sometimes yes, sometimes no.

It’s the “sometimes no” that you should care about. In your SMS program, in which situation is it not convenient to report issues?

Definition of Acceptable Level of Safety in Aviation SMS

Acceptable Level of Safety (ALoS) in Aviation SMS is how you define the maximum level of risk you are willing to accept as “reasonable.”

When I say "you," I'm actually referring to the person who has the authority to accept risk for a particular area of operations. This may include:

• Accountable executive;
• Department heads;

Why Quality Management Is So Important for Safety

Quality management systems (QMS) are the big brother of safety management systems (SMS). They are often depicted as having conflicting interests.

Unfortunately, this is true in many organizations because the bottom line (money) is pushed more than safety.

QMS and SMS don’t have to be in conflict. In fact, if given the time and resources, they can integrate and significantly strengthen your organization’s:

Definition of Risk and Risk Occurrence

The concept of risk changes depending on which context you use it. This is not comfortable for many safety managers who insist that risk is simply one thing.

It’s important that safety professionals keep an open mind to variations in how different safety terms are used.

What Is Safety Manager Performance?

Safety manager performance is the ability of safety managers to drive performance in aviation SMS. “Drive performance” can mean either:

• Active improvement in different areas of the SMS;
• Active sustaining of quality performance; and
• Active mitigation of safety issues.

Why Department Head Charts Are Particularly Important

Traditionally, department heads are the individuals responsible for managing corrective and preventive actions associated with reported issues.

Managing an issue involves making sure that corrective-preventative actions (CPAs) are implemented appropriately.