Aviation service providers around the world have been devoting considerable resources to implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS). Each of these SMS implementations requires safety performance monitoring and measurement of critical data elements.
Clearly, many elements and risk management activities that makeup SMS' performance. Where does a safety manager start?
I’m sure you can rattle off many specific examples of SMS performance. What I’m really getting at is the core themes and principles that drive high-quality risk management performance in aviation SMS.
When it comes right down to it, we're talking about the safety management team’s ability to:
Adaptability, regulatory compliance, safety culture. Just about any performance metric, you can think of will fall into one or more of these areas. Aviation SMS Leading Indicators should be metrics that indicate what drives SMS performance.
One popular technique to assess SMS performance measures management's performance, in terms of responsiveness, of your SMS' risk management processes. How long, on average, does it take for your risk management process to run its full course?
Do you monitor this metric? Do you measure how long it takes to process a safety concern based on operational risk? For example, do you monitor the length of time to process a high-risk safety report versus less critical safety reports?
How many days does it take for your SMS to process safety reports from the time they have been reported until the time it takes to formally close the safety report? You can exclude the subsequent review process, as safety reports could be monitored for several years after they have been reported. We are more interested in capturing the time-lapse from when the safety report is submitted until the safety report is put into the "monitoring phase" where stakeholders and auditors can observe and report.
Our safety chart in question is a fantastic indicator of;
For one, the assumption is that when issues are being closed quickly, management is demonstrating its ability to respond to needs and make appropriate changes without hiccups.
If not, then clearly management is struggling to be able to respond. Lack of responsiveness from management happens for several reasons:
Points 1 and 2 demonstrate how much management values safety culture, as apathetic management clearly does not value cultivating safety behaviors, and poor abilities demonstrate an unwillingness to try and actually improve.
As a great example of a leading indicator, average days for closing issues is a great predictor of how well an SMS will be able to respond to safety events and successfully fix safety issues. It is implicit that when safety issues are closed, each safety issue’s Corrective and Preventative Actions is also completed and implemented.
There may be long-term, outstanding corrective actions that require undergoing a regulatory oversight approval process before the corrective action and related safety issue can be "officially closed." Often, six months or longer may be required to obtain regulatory acceptance or approval of newly implemented processes. These are exceptions that occur in a small percentage of your treated, reported safety issues. Whenever possible, your SMS database should accommodate these exceptions to maintain accuracy. You are more interested in evaluating your organization's SMS performance and you will want to avoid obfuscating the data that is inherently dependent on regulatory approval processes.
For this reason, this chart is such a great aviation SMS leading indicator, as it essentially measures:
Data about risk management behavior tends to be great for leading indicators because it is behavior that leads to mature safety cultures and additional proactive risk management activities. Fast closure times most often correlate to other indicative areas of risk management, such as:
Monitoring an aviation SMS' performance in a similar fashion allows senior management to quickly take the pulse of the organization's safety culture. This becomes an excellent SMS performance monitoring chart that deserves a proper place in your SMS performance monitoring dashboard. A quick glance on a regular basis allows managers to determine:
The Average Days to Close Issues chart takes into account several different elements:
This chart simply tabulates the total number of days issues were open in each risk assessment level category and divides each number by the total number of safety issues in each category. For example, if “acceptable” issues were open for a total of 400 days and there were 100 acceptable issues, then the average closure date is 4 days.
This chart is automatically created with a professional, commercially available aviation SMS database, but can be created manually so long as the number of days each issue is open is being tracked. With an SMS database, there will be less work for safety managers as important, mile-stone dates are managed by the system and require no additional interaction from the safety team.
For safety managers using spreadsheets, the most important dates to capture are the date the safety issue was reported and the date the safety issue's status was changed to "Closed." While spreadsheets can drive this performance monitoring chart, your SMS review processes will be more sustainable using an SMS database designed to specifically address SMS documentation requirements.
If you are reading this article, chances are that you currently use SMS Pro to manage SMS documentation. Most users will access this article from within the SMS database by clicking on the chart in the Executive Dashboard.
In 2019, there is a planned upgrade to this chart by comparing performance for the past twelve months with the previous twelve months. We believe this enhancement will add more value to this chart in that it will guide management's decision-making. With the enhancement, managers will be able to determine whether SMS performance is improving or declining.
Understanding which way SMS performance is trending is important for various reasons:
Because this chart is a fantastic aviation SMS leading indicator, it definitely falls into the category of identification, collation, analysis, and application of indicators to be monitored, which is part of the basic steps for establishing effective safety monitoring as developed by EUROCTONTROL.
Monitoring this chart is the first and most basic step towards establishing a baseline for management’s efficiency in facilitating risk management and demonstrating continuous improvement of the SMS.
Other charts that deal with risk assessment, while not necessarily leading indicators themselves, naturally complement this chart by giving it more context, such as:
Managers can easily monitor the safety performance of all employees when they have the proper tools. Take measured steps to improve your safety culture.
Last updated June 2024.