You know the old expression: it only takes one to poison the well.
We end up writing a lot about resistance to change in aviation safety management systems (SMS) because it’s something many aviation safety managers consistently deal with.
Resistance to the SMS should never be taken lightly; however, dealing with resistance requires tact and ingenuity in order to avoid exacerbating the resistance.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
I am guessing that every accountable executive you speak to will honestly profess to support their aviation safety management system (SMS). After all, the alternative would be that top management only cares about making money and not doing everything reasonably practical to improve safety.
Signs that top management doesn't support their SMS include:
Topics: 4-Safety Promotion
Historically, aviation safety management strategies relied predominantly upon reactive risk management principles. For example, a critical part would break or an accident occurred, and managers would then attempt to determine the root cause and fix the issue.
In a perfect world, aviation service providers will lean toward a more modern proactive, organizational-based methodology to avert serious accidents before they occur. By looking at Boeing stats, commercial traffic is very safe, with greater than 99.999% accident-free rate.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
Most safety managers immediately recognize ICAO's four pillars:
An interesting aside is that many Americans believe these four pillars were FAA's idea. Does your eyebrow raise at our arrogance or ignorance?
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation
Hazard identification and subsequent hazard mitigation strategies are critical for successful, continued operations. Monitoring which groups of employees are reporting safety issues in your aviation safety management system (SMS) allows management to stay abreast of who is involved in the SMS.
Alternatively, knowing which employees are neglecting to report hazards is also useful information to safety professionals. This would indicate that safety promotion efforts or SMS training efforts need to be reinforced.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
There are several times each year when managers are interested in trending charts coming from their aviation safety management systems (SMS). These times include during:
Trending is perhaps among the most difficult tasks for safety managers when they don't have automated tools and databases to capture hazard reports and classify these reported issues.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Participants of healthy aviation safety management systems (SMS) enjoy trusting relationships between management and staff. The goal for organizational success without sacrificing safety and employee welfare is actively promoted and accepted by all.
A systemic problem exists in our aviation industry in that an alarming number of aviation service providers have substandard corporate safety cultures.
Topics: 1-Safety Policy
The term risk mitigation, broadly speaking, means to try and prevent danger. You might think of it as “reducing exposure.” In general, there are four best practices employed in aviation SMS to mitigate risk, and they include:
Risk management tools in aviation SMS is simply a vague term that refers to resources that can help you manage risk. Often, the most beneficial resources tend to be simple, inexpensive, and helpful for both providing guidance and helping you organize your time.
By “simple tools” we are talking about risk management tools like:
Risk tolerance is simply how much risk you are willing to accept. High-risk tolerance is generally not a good idea because it means that you are willing to “tolerate” or “accept” a high degree of risk for performing tasks. Low-risk tolerance is generally good because it means you err on the side of safety; if it’s risky, don’t do it.
Risk tolerance is something that happens on an organizational level, and an individual level:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
These two on-demand videos offer:
