In aviation safety management systems (SMS), one of the main activities that senior managers and safety teams will undertake will be to
Hazard Risk Assessment and Hazard Risk Analysis are central components of the highly inter-related Safety Risk Management (SRM) and Safety Assurance (SA) processes.
Just as having a correct understanding of various risk management definitions, understanding the difference between analysis and assessment is important to ensure:
SMS regulatory compliance guidelines recommend a particular order for risk analysis and assessment for good reason. There is no reason for you to recreate the wheel when developing your SMS risk management processes. The processes outlined by ICAO and regulatory agencies are logical, and best of all, easy to understand. In this case, performing an initial hazard risk assessment BEFORE the hazard risk analysis activity is sort of like trying to cook before lighting the fire.
Understanding the differences between risk assessment and risk analysis is an essential part of getting the risk management workflow right, and knowing when to perform required risk management activities in which order. Analyze and assess activities are related, but they are not the same thing.
Here are the differences between hazard risk assessment and hazard risk analysis.
The most important thing to understand about hazard risk analysis is that it is reductive in the sense that it involves:
When conducting the risk analysis, safety personnel should consider the:
The purpose of the hazard risk analysis is to identify:
Classifying a reported safety issue during the risk management process is a perfect example of outcomes that result from risk analysis. The process of classifying reported safety issues and audit findings is synonymous with documenting the interpretation of the risk analysis results.
Once a safety concern has multiple, descriptive classifications associated with it, one can understand the simple, basic elements that either contributed to or will contribute to, the hazard manifesting itself and exposing the organization to unwanted risk. Such classifications are common:
You can realistically classify safety concerns using many other dimensions or taxonomies, such as
Classification schemes (taxonomies) are useful to describe safety concerns, but how is the actual analysis performed? There are many accepted methodologies for conducting a hazard risk analysis, but some of the most common are:
Hazard risk assessment is something that happens after a hazard risk analysis. After all, one has to know the details of any problem before one can determine operational risk. Hazard risk assessments in your aviation SMS' risk management processes involve:
The reason that hazard risk assessment happens after analysis is that the findings from the analysis will heavily influence the value of the risk assessment. In other words, risk assessments without analysis is an assessment that is not supported by anything, no data, no historical review, simply just a hunch or a wild guess.
Risk assessments in aviation SMS are facilitated with the use of a risk matrix. In your risk matrix, various risk assessment values should have clearly defined boundaries and definitions. For example, in the case of a risk matrix:
By qualifiers, we are talking about defining things like:
As implied, the relation between risk analysis and risk assessment is:
Long story short, the risk assessment summarizes the analysis and facilitates the communication of risk among risk management professionals.
The primary workflow usually looks something like this:
The value risk management professionals receive from the risk assessment is always dependent on the risk analysis. When safety managers haphazardly rush through the risk analysis activities, the accountable executive and senior managers may be making decisions based not on facts, but on imperfect assumptions.
A major challenge for performing risk analysis activities is reviewing historical data. You are trying to determine:
These are all valid questions to ask when conducting the risk analysis. A challenge many safety professionals face every day is that they don't have an effective data management strategy to facilitate responsive risk analysis activities. An aviation SMS database allows managers to more quickly evaluate historical safety issues and to determine which risk controls are not performing as designed.
Does this sound like your aviation SMS?
Having all relevant SMS data in one centralized SMS database has many advantages. These advantages go well beyond data analysis. If you are having trouble reviewing historical data during your data analysis activities, what will you do when it comes to practicing predictive risk management activities?
The longer you wait to start managing your aviation SMS data in an organized SMS database, the more opportunities will slip by.
To learn how your organization can benefit from an SMS database, please watch these short demo videos.
Last updated in July 2024.