Aviation service providers are in business to provide a service. While some providers are government-funded, most offer their services to achieve common strategic business objectives, namely:
Every aviation service provider works with finite resources to deliver their services to align with their business objectives. These operators assign budgets to divisions or departments to perform their mission.
In most cases, there is an implicit (and often explicit) accountability requirement to ensure assigned funds are properly used.
Have you ever wondered why your safety budget is minimal or next to nonexistent?
How do you move your aviation safety management system (SMS) from reactive risk management to the idealistic predictive analysis phase?
What is the predictive analysis phase of an aviation SMS? What does it mean to you? Do you believe that your company will have a crystal ball and keep all accidents from happening once you reach the SMS predictive analysis phase?
How do you move your safety department into your company's list of visible profit drivers?
Divisions or departments with the largest budgets visibly affect the bottom line. I repeat: departments generating revenue visibly affect an aviation service provider's ability to provide services to stakeholders.
Visible profit drivers at airlines and airports are:
The safety department is not on this list of profit drivers. Aviation safety managers must work very hard to visibly demonstrate value. You may argue that "Administration" is not a direct profit driver, but all businesses need Administration to keep the lights on.
The safety department is very similar to the security department in that it is difficult to measure and show tangible value. To management, safety and security departments are similar to consumer insurance. Most of us are familiar with insurance as a consumer. You probably purchase one of these types:
If you are like me, I don't like to have too much insurance. I'd rather put my money to work in other ways.
Since I don't like to have too much insurance, it makes sense that management doesn't want to invest too heavily in safety. Management wants to give the appearance that "safety is first," but we all know that the bottom line comes first.
Management is practical, just like you. Can your household survive without insurance for a term, such as six months or a year? Probably so. Our household goes years without using insurance. Imagine what you could do with the money.
When we opt to use our money to make more money, then we must accept the risk of a hazard manifesting itself and suffering the consequences. We hope that we don't suffer a catastrophe when we choose to operate with higher risk.
Management often thinks the same way because they are logical and have limited budgets at their disposal. They would prefer to allocate funds to the visible profit drivers and hope for the best, just as you do when you opt to not pay for your medical insurance for a year.
Does your boss come up to you and say, "Great work today. You saved us from an accident today?"
Or
"Good job. We had no events that cost us money today."
This is highly unlikely. Yet when there is a safety event, you may feel all eyes are directed to the "safety manager." Why wasn't this event predicted? Why were we not more aware of this potential risk?
We are unable to see into the future. Yet we can see into the past and predict an event.
Major events are most often preceded by many smaller events, which by themselves may casually appear inconsequential. The Heinrich-Bird accident pyramid visually illustrates that for every 600 close calls in your organization, there will be ten minor accidents and one major accident.
Aviation safety managers around the world face four common challenges:
The first two points are related to company size and corporate safety culture. Smaller companies don't have many employees to report hazards or potential hazards. Simple enough. However, an aviation SMS' hazard reporting culture must be continually stimulated to urge employees to participate in the SMS and report those 600 close calls.
As your safety team works on those 600 close calls, your aviation SMS will strengthen your ability to withstand the effects of minor and major accidents. In short, your risk mitigation strategies will improve ineffectiveness. The point to really stress is that your employees need to be actively engaged in the SMS to help ensure your company is prepared to deal with that single event with the fatality or major accident. Hazard reporting culture can be improved in 80% of all aviation service providers, regardless of your industry segment.
As I alluded to above, most employees will not report an issue unless it is required. For the sake of discussion, let's define an issue as an:
Organizational safety issues must be reported, categorized, and analyzed in order to predict future events. When issues are not reported, the safety management process fails.
As I keep saying, most employees won't report an issue unless it is required. Furthermore, most employees will not report issues even
There are many strategies to encourage hazard reporting to acquire enough data to regularly engage in predictive analytical procedures. They may include:
Let us now assume employee issue-reporting has increased or you already enjoy a healthy reporting culture. Safety managers will need to be able to easily classify issues according to an industry-accepted schema. Since every company is a bit different, your schema may include common industry elements including some others that are particular to your industry, such as key business or safety performance indicators (KPIs or SPIs).
You can have the best safety reporting culture in the world, but your aviation risk management program will lack value unless you can quickly categorize your issues and easily generate reports. If it is not easy, you will either:
Sustainable risk management processes are processes that are repeatable and within the capabilities of the assigned safety personnel. When your data analysis activity is not easy to repeat, your chances decrease markedly for making sound risk management decisions based on your predictive analytics. Sound decision-making that reduces organizational risk is the objective of your predictive analysis.
Spreadsheets are not the proper technology for classifying safety data when you wish to progress to the predictive analysis phase. Managing spreadsheet data for reported safety issues is cumbersome and not sustainable. An SMS database is required.
Several low-cost, commercially available SMS database solutions make hazard reporting and risk management a sustainable process, regardless of whether you are managing ten issues per month, or 1000. I recommend a complete system for managing all required SMS processes instead of adopting another point solution that will address only a particular aspect of aviation SMS. It makes good business sense that all your SMS data is stored and easily accessible from a single SMS database. Using an SMS database is a sustainable solution if you aspire to successfully benefit by reducing losses and improving safety from your collected safety data.
Safety managers are motivated, results-driven professionals. They work hard and many of their activities are obscured from the rest of the organization. Analyzing data is the most complex task in reaching the predictive analysis phase of your SMS.
To predict the probability and potential severity of a future event, safety managers spend weeks and months:
The disappointing reality is that this task is often too brutal to bear more than once for average aviation safety managers. The average aviation safety manager is kept busy putting out fires and managing the aviation SMS requirements. Unless the aviation safety manager has proper safety data analysis tools, the predictive analysis ideal will never bear fruit.
For a deeper treatment of predictive analysis, you may want to read "Safety Management Systems in Aviation" by Alan Stolzer, et.al.
As you analyze your collected safety data, you will be looking for trends that alert management that a particular area of operations requires additional risk management strategies to mitigate risk and reduce losses. In short, you are looking for a pattern based on your historical safety performance.
Modern aviation safety management principles pull aviation service providers from reactive risk management to proactive risk management. If an operator is ever to reach this final goal of proactive risk management with predictive capabilities, safety managers will need:
Many claims that aviation SMS offer many benefits to aviation service providers. Your company will not benefit fully from your efforts until you reach the predictive analysis phase. Oddly enough, your safety department will also start enjoying larger budgets because the safety department will become a visible profit driver.
Good luck.
See how aviation SMS tools multiply the effect of your safety team!
An integrated safety-quality assurance solution allows aviation service providers to use one system to manage both safety and quality elements.
Last updated May 2024.