SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What is Advanced Aviation SMS Series?

Aviation SMS Must Be Business First--Safety Second

Does your aviation SMS make money? Probably not.

Why not? Most aviation SMS failures result from operators consistently neglecting to follow the prescribed aviation SMS recipe as originally designed. Other operators treat SMS as a "check-the-box" obligation to satisfy as expeditiously as possible, thereby consciously neglecting the "presumable benefits."

Aviation service providers with more than ten employees should benefit financially from the SMS prescription whenever they have sufficient business activity to comfortably sustain operational expenses. Unfortunately, this is not reality.

Marginally profitable businesses maintain higher risk of SMS failure because they lack resources to correctly implement the prescribed SMS formula. These operators cannot afford to leave money on the table and must look at SMS as a  business opportunity and not a regulatory burden.

Do You Really Understand Safety Risk Controls?

FAA Part 5 - Safety Management Systems has a subtle, but important requirement stuck in subsection 5.25 Designation and responsibilities of required safety management personnel. There is a subsection that packs a dynamite punch that should leave most of you reeling with uncertainty.

This requirement is buried in the subsection 5.25 (c) Designation of management personnel and deals with monitoring the effectiveness of safety risk controls.

Why You Need to Monitor the Effectiveness of Control Measures

Control measures are the heart of your aviation safety management system’s (SMS) risk mitigation efforts. You may call your "control measures" either:

• Risk controls; or
• Simply "controls."

In this article, we'll use the term "control measures," but I am sure many of you call them "risk controls." Either term is permissible; however, I'm detecting a global preference in the aviation industry for the term "risk control."

Purpose of Continuous Improvement in Safety Assurance Pillar

In every aviation safety management system (SMS), the accountable executive is responsible for ensuring the SMS is properly implemented and performing in all areas of the organization. The intent is not for the aviation SMS to reach some ideal "plateau of safety" and then maintain the "ideal safety level." Far from it!

The purpose of the aviation SMS is to demonstrate that the organization can proactively manage safety year-after-year, audit-after-audit.

What Is Safety Assurance in Aviation SMS

In order for an aviation safety management system (SMS) to be effective, the SMS must be monitored to provide assurance to managers and regulatory authorities that the SMS is both

• implemented correctly, and
• working as designed.

An ICAO compliant SMS is structured around four main components, which are also known as the Four Pillars. The third aviation SMS component is Safety Assurance (SA).

Why Classifications Are Important in Risk Management Activities

The objective of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is proactively manage safety using structured risk management processes.

Once operators have these processes in place, it is the civil aviation authorities' (CAA) expectation for aviation service providers able to use all four SMS components (also known as pillars) to enhance their capability to identify safety issues and spot trends before they result in a

• near-miss,
• incident, or

What Is Data Mining in Aviation SMS?

Data mining is a critical, intermittent risk management activity safety managers need to perform in their aviation safety management systems (SMS) to organize, understand, and process collected safety data acquired during the organization's risk management processes.

Data mining techniques can be performed with a modest, home-grown aviation safety database and simple tools, or with complex software and professional, commercially available aviation safety databases.

Why It’s Important to Understand Difference between Assessment and Analysis

In aviation safety management systems (SMS), one of the main activities that senior managers and safety teams will undertake will be to

1. identify hazards;
2. evaluate risk associated with these hazards; and
3. determine whether existing risk controls are adequate.

Time to Be Honest about Your Aviation SMS Implementation

Creating successful aviation safety management systems (SMS) requires a great deal of honesty on the part of:

• accountable executives;
• operational department heads;
• safety management teams; and
• front-line employees.

In many cases, managers and employees alike tend to wear rose-colored glasses when evaluating operational safety and the efficacy of their SMS implementation.

What Is Continuous Improvement in Aviation SMS

The purpose of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is to ensure aviation service providers have a structured, formal process to manage safety, thereby reducing risk to the "transportation system."

Aviation SMS implementations are designed to continuously improve safety performance by: