Both new and experienced aviation safety professionals sometimes have to ask themselves, what is a gap analysis and why am I using it?
The first thing anyone needs to understand about a gap analysis is that it is a process used by both new aviation safety management systems (SMS) and maturing SMS. This process is used by aviation service providers to determine:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Risk Assessments in aviation safety management systems (SMS) are how you qualify, quantify, and rank risk exposure for:
Risk assessments are absolutely central to decision-making in SMS, as all actions performed on the safety issue depend on the initial and subsequent risk assessments.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Monitoring the performance of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is a common activity for safety managers and upper management alike. Furthermore, in every SMS, the accountable executive is responsible for directing actions to correct substandard safety performance whenever it is detected.
How is substandard safety performance detected in your organization?
How does management know which operational areas required additional risk mitigation measures?
Topics: Risk Management Software
Aviation safety managers share many common traits, including:
Topics: 1-Safety Policy
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.
The risk assessment process in aviation SMS starts with hazard identification and hazard reporting.
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
Safety culture in aviation safety management systems (SMS) is usually defined as being the safety attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and values of employees in an organization. Unfortunately, such a high-level, conceptual definition of safety culture does not help safety manager address core personnel challenges in your organization's SMS.
In much of the SMS guidance material pushed out by regulatory agencies and standards-setting bodies, such as ICAO's document 9859 Safety Management Manual,
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion, Safety Culture
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
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