SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Proactive Risk Management a Dream for Many Aviation Safety Programs

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.

Safety Assurance Monitoring Activities - Third ICAO SMS Pillar

Most safety managers immediately recognize ICAO's four pillars:

• Safety Policy;
• Risk Management;
• Safety Assurance; and
• Safety Promotion.

An interesting aside is that many Americans believe these four pillars were FAA's idea. Does your eyebrow raise at our arrogance or ignorance?

Why Knowing Who Is Reporting Hazards Is Important

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.

Using Trending Charts in Aviation SMS

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:

• Safety performance monitoring; and
• Determination of continuous improvement progress.

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.

Safety Reporting Remains Core to Aviation SMS

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.

What Are Best Practices for Risk Mitigation in Aviation Safety Management

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 Avoidance;
• Risk Transference;
• Risk Segmentation; and
• Risk Likelihood Reduction.

What Are Risk Management Tools

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:

• Checklists;
• Templates;

Definition of Risk Tolerance

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:

• Organizational: how much risk is your organization willing to accept for any safety concern without performing mitigating actions; and

Effective Use of Power in Aviation SMS

Aviation safety managers around the world are charged with implementing required aviation safety management systems (SMS). SMS implementations affect entire organizations and not simply a single department, such as:

• Flight ops;
• Ground ops; or
• Maintenance.

Everyone at your organization must be on board the SMS train, otherwise, you will continue to receive findings whenever the SMS auditor visits your organization.

Hazards Are Dynamic

Aviation safety management systems (SMS) have the objective to:

• proactively manage safety,
• identify potential hazards,
• determine risk, and
• implement measures that mitigate the risk.

Furthermore, an aviation SMS affords operators more opportunities to identify safety issues and spot trends before they result in "The Accident."