SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What Is Phase 1 of Aviation SMS Implementation

Phase 1 of Aviation SMS implementation involves activities that lay the groundwork you will need to begin implementing other parts of your SMS, such as critical processes and policy.

Phase 1 of aviation SMS has the goal of answering like:

• How are we currently managing safety?
• How do we ultimately want to manage safety?
• How are we going to go from where we are now to how we want to manage safety?

What Are Problems With Traditional Record Keeping

Tracking employees' documents and records is one of the most important documentation tasks aviation service providers have. This is especially true in the case of pilots, where poor record-keeping can result in regulatory fines.

Most aviation service providers manage their record keeping manually, such as in:

• Excel spreadsheets;
• Word documents;
• PDFs; or

What Is Optimized Pilot Records Management

Aviation service providers are well aware importance of tracking pilots’ records and documents.

At any given time, an aviation service provider may have dozens of records that require action. Especially when these records are being documented in something like an Excel spreadsheet.

Sound familiar?

Managing all of these records can:

What Is SMS Design

SMS design is the foundation of your safety program. It is the Safety Risk Management pillar portion of the 4 Pillars of SMS.

When building your safety program, establishing a thorough, encompassing design will be the first major milestone of your SMS.

The design of your SMS is broken into five parts, following the SRM process:

• Describing your SMS and the context of your operations, such as applicable resources, locations, etc.;

Why Social Psychology of Risk Is Important

Social psychology plays a tremendously important role in safe operations. In fact, it may play the most important role in safety outcomes. Safety performance in your aviation safety program will hinge on your ability to create a climate of positive social psychology through:

• Safety Policy;
• Safety Promotion; and
• SMS design (Safety Risk Management).

Steps for How to Manage Hazard Reports

The 4 I’s of Issue Management are a useful, high-level way of looking at the process and steps for managing hazard reports.

In terms of how to manage hazard reports, these 4 basic steps in the process are:

• Ingest an issue through various hazard reporting methods;
• Investigate the causes of the issue, such as the root causes and Human Factors;

What Are Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators in aviation SMS measure the core safety concerns of your organization. They help you evaluate your success at reaching important safety targets.

KPIs are NOT used to evaluate:

• Overall safety performance of the entire SMS
  • KPIs are for only the most important areas of performance;
• All aspects of organizational effectiveness
  • KPIs are concerned only with the effectiveness of safety objectives

Why Fatigue Monitoring Matters

Fatigue is the sixth of the Dirty Dozen Human Factors.

Fatigue has traditionally received a lot of attention from flight crew due to the dramatic effects of the different types of fatigue on pilot and cabin crew performance.

One of the primary challenges associated with fatigue in the workplace is that the symptoms of fatigue are other Human Factors. Consider that a person dealing with fatigue will:

• Have less situational awareness;
• Be more easily distracted;

Hazard Reporting More Than Just Hazards

“Hazard reporting” is a bit of a misnomer because employees report much more than hazards. Hazards are simply one type of thing that people report. Perhaps a more accurate expression for hazard reporting would be “issue reporting.”

Hazard reporting in SMS includes all types of concerns, such as:

• Quality concerns;
• Operational concerns;

Types of Aviation Safety Culture

While it is normal to say that safety culture is something you should pay attention to, it might be better to say that safety culture are things you should pay attention to.

Safety culture in aviation organizations is more than just one thing. There are multiple “types” of safety culture.

The five faces of safety culture you should consider are:

1. Safety commitment
2. Safety behavior