The unfortunate fact is that many managers in aviation safety management systems (SMS) don’t start asking serious questions until their SMS is either “stuck” or in trouble.
Questions and answers need to come at the beginning of SMS implementation. Your answers to fundamental questions about safety management will be a guideline through the entire process of your SMS' implementation.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
There are many possible definitions of safety culture in aviation safety management systems (SMS). Generic definitions focus on:
While these points certainly are a core part of safety culture, they are also unhelpfully vague.
Topics: Quality-Safety Management
Mandatory and voluntary safety reporting policies are an extremely important part of providing guidance for safety reporting in aviation safety management systems (SMS). Yet, we rarely see these policies published and communicated in aviation SMS implementations.
Topics: Safety Culture
Keywords in Aviation Safety Management Systems (SMS) are the most important words that new or experienced aviation safety professionals need to know.
Topics: Risk Management Training
Operators implementing formal aviation safety management systems (SMS) need to develop, practice and maintain a documented process of risk analysis, risk assessment, and risk control to an acceptable level of safety (ALoS). We say that the process needs to be formal in the sense that risk assessments/analysis needs to be documented and communicated to employees based on their participatory role in the aviation SMS.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
I have recently seen a great rise in the interest and emphasis placed on safety culture in aviation safety management systems (SMS).
Until the last number of years, safety culture has been treated like an appendage or “bonus” to having a performant, successful aviation SMS implementation. Now, however, I see safety culture starting to pop up all over the place.
By definition, aviation safety culture is described as reflecting the real commitment to safety, or how people act when no one is watching.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Safety Risk Management receives by far the most attention of any aspect of aviation safety management systems (SMS). It is, as you might say, “where the action is,” in terms of managing risk and the most focused-upon element in an aviation SMS.
Despite the fact that other aspects of aviation risk management processes provide equally valuable assistance in developing an aviation SMS, SRM deals most directly with risk exposure.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
Risk matrices are probably the inter-industry safety standard as the primary tool used in risk evaluation. In aviation safety management systems (SMS) they are ubiquitous.
Risk matrices are simplistic charts (though not necessarily “simple”) that use “probability” and “severity” to quantify the risk priority of a real or hypothetical safety scenario. The quantification is generally broken into 3 categories:
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
The primary objective of risk mitigation strategies in aviation SMS programs is usually detailed as being a plan to implement risk controls that reduce the likelihood/severity of each identified specific risk. However, this risk mitigation plan is limited in that it does not address the mitigation of hazard occurrence.
Despite the fact that oversight agencies generally stress risk mitigation as being accident-centric, aviation SMS programs should include hazard-mitigation and risk-mitigation strategies.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
The phrase “aviation risk management” gives the impression of being a single, solid idea – something to attain for – but in actual practice, it is a cyclical process.
Simply put, risk management is about identifying and placing controls (i.e., strengthening) weak points in an aviation safety management system (SMS).
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
These two on-demand videos offer:
