Roles in aviation SMS software are different categories of permissions and access assigned to users accessing your SMS database. Each role will have different responsibilities and authority.
Roles allow you to organize the human elements in your safety management system. This helps you:
Developing roles is one of the first things you need to do when implementing your aviation safety management system. Roles should be:
For example, John Doe might have the role of SMS Investigator and SMS Safety Manager. Jane Doe might have the role of Accountable Executive.
Over time, employees' roles will change as they are promoted/demoted in your organization. You may even need to add/remove roles as your organization changes.
It’s extremely important to point out that SMS roles are not the same as roles in your company. SMS roles are specific to the safety program, including:
The most common roles that you will see in nearly every aviation service provider’s aviation SMS are:
This article will look at the roles bolded above. Aviation Service providers will also have additional roles that are specific to their operations. For example, an airline will probably have a Pilot role. An airport may have a Security role.
The Accountable Executive role in aviation SMS is the person ultimately responsible for the SMS. Each organization will only have one Accountable Executive. Here are the markers of this role:
This role is usually fairly “hands off” in that they will not interact with the SMS every day. Mostly, this role will delegate responsibilities to others, and then receive regular status reports. The Accountable Executive must ensure that the responsibilities delegated are actually being carried out.
The Safety Manager role in SMS is the steward of the safety management system. Besides the Accountable Executive, they have the most authority in the SMS. Here are the markers of a Safety Manager role:
By the time an organization reaches around 80 people, the organization’s Safety Manager should be a full-time safety personnel. He/she is the expert in all things safety-related: compliance, performance, documentation, and policy.
In smaller organizations with fewer things to accomplish in the SMS, the Safety Manager role may be assigned to someone who also has non-safety duties (pilot, department head, etc.)
The Subject-Matter Expert role, usually called the Department Head role, is someone who knows the ins and outs of a particular part of an organization. The markers of this role are:
Subject-matter experts manage issues in their particular area of knowledge because they likely know the best fix for that issue. Department heads also carry authority in the business structure of an organization. In small organizations with little complexity, the same person might have both the Department Head role and the Safety Manager role – this is okay so long as it’s manageable.
Typically, an organization will have a Department Head role assigned for every 20-30 employees.
The Data Entry role is very useful because it allows otherwise regular employees to have elevated access to safety information to enter data or retrieve data (i.e., “reading from” and “writing to” the SMS). For example, this role might be given to an administrative assistant.
The markers of this role are:
This role does not make safety decisions, they simply help manage safety data.
The SMS User role in aviation safety management is the base role assigned to employees. It simply means: that this person is an employee and is responsible for interacting with the SMS. In general, here are the markers of an SMS User role:
The SMS User role will be assigned to a majority of users in your organization.
It’s outside the scope of this article (covered in another article) but additional roles your SMS may have are:
These roles fill a specific safety function, and most of them will help you further organize your safety management efforts.
Last updated in August 2024.