SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

Management’s Role in SMS

Managers must take an active role in SMS to consistently improve their knowledge and experience of operations.

I believe managers need to be trained in SMS to ensure their effective participation and contribution to the SMS.

Origin of Formal Aviation SMS Requirements

Aviation safety is not a new concept. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past dozen years, you will know that the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) mandated formal aviation safety management systems in November 2006.

At a minimum, these aviation safety management systems (SMS) required that the system:

• Identifies safety hazards;
• Ensures that remedial action necessary to maintain an acceptable level of safety is implemented;

How to Quantify Resistance to Your SMS Using This Article

Grab a spare pen and paper so you can write down some notes. What we are looking for is a total score. It works like this:

• Score is on a scale from 0 to 25
• Lower number is better, indicating less resistance
• Higher number is worse, indicating higher resistance
• Read through each section of this article, learning about each piece of resistance

Why Evaluate and Justify Risk Controls in Aviation SMS

If there is one thing all aviation compliance authority guidelines (including ICAO) agree upon, it’s that your aviation safety mitigation controls need to be thoroughly analyzed BEFORE you implement them.

Safety mitigation controls are the bedrock of your risk mitigation strategy.

Safety mitigation controls are also commonly called:

Transparency, a Hot Topic:

In recent years, managerial concerns surrounding organizational transparency have become extremely important at all levels of industry and government. So important in fact, that most sensational news stories in recent years - namely Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, the Sony Hack, Bradley Manning - are issues of organizational transparency.

What Is Confidentiality in Aviation SMS

Confidentiality in aviation SMS refers to how much personal information should be made available to your organization. By personal information, we are mainly talking about personal information in safety reports, such as people involved or the name of the reporter.

When safety issues are reported, employees may or may not have access to details about the reported issue.

What Is ICAO’s Requirement for Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Element 2.2 of ICAO’s requirements is for you to develop and maintain a process to:

• Analyze risk;
• Assess risk; and
• Control risk.

While just one requirement, ICAO provides quite a bit of guidance on what this process should look like. There are many considerations in this step, and while ICAO doesn’t explicitly say, “Do it this way,” they provide a lot of meaningful guidance on what a best practice would look like.

What Is Safety Performance Monitoring and Measurement

Safety performance monitoring and measurement is an extremely important part of Safety Assurance. It’s how you verify the safety performance of your organization.

By safety performance, we are talking about:

Extending Risk Management Education to Upper Management

Safety managers are tasked with "safety management" which can be considered "risk management." As they practice risk management activities, safety managers are expected to actively "react" to reported safety issues or audit findings.

This activity of "putting out fires" is part of the reactive risk management process that your company is probably pretty good at performing.

Safety Managers Get Into Trouble Due to Verbal Skills

Aviation safety managers are among the most articulate group of all aviation professionals. I don't have all the answers to why this group is so:

• Detailed;
• Verbally adept with writing; and
• Equally skilled at speaking.

Perhaps this is due to the similarity between truck drivers and pilots. Of course, I'm smiling as I write this, but have you ever noticed how both pilots and truck drivers have the gift of gab?