SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

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."

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.

As your SMS matures, your ability to collect and analyze safety data will increase. Your safety management capabilities are expected to gradually become more sophisticated. Furthermore, SMS regulatory auditors will have higher expectations of your SMS as more data has been collected, or should have been collected.

How will you react to these demands to demonstrate continuous improvement?

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). The primary purpose of safety assurance is to demonstrate the SMS remains functional and alert management of substandard safety performance. Substandard safety performance is corrected under the direction of the Accountable Executive.

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
• accident.

Classifications are the bread and butter for organizing the SMS implementation's accumulated safety data. This accumulated data may easily encompass five to ten years' worth of safety information.

Without proper organization, the value of your safety data is greatly reduced. Yes, the data still has value, but considerably more effort will be required to perform meaningful data mining activities. This holds true not only with your future predictive risk management activities, but also your day-to-day reactive and proactive risk management activities.

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.

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.

Hazard Risk Assessment and Hazard Risk Analysis are central components of the highly inter-related Safety Risk Management (SRM) and Safety Assurance (SA) processes.

Just as having a correct understanding of various risk management definitions, understanding the difference between analysis and assessment is important to ensure:

• Accuracy of decisions;
• Efficient risk management actions; and
• Proper workflow as hazards are reviewed, treated and monitored in the aviation SMS.

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.

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:

Purpose of Safety Performance Assessment in Safety Assurance Pillar

If you cannot measure safety performance in your aviation safety management systems (SMS), then:

• How do you know whether your operations are as safe as can be reasonably expected?
• How can your set safety goals and objectives when you don't have actionable intelligence to assist in fact-based decision-making processes?
• How do you know your aviation SMS is driving operational performance improvements?

Aviation Safety Management Systems Are Defined by Interactions

Aviation safety management systems (SMS) need certain interactions or features within the system for it to be successful.

Interactions in aviation SMS always denote a relationship between two parts. These parts can be any aspect of the SMS implementation's moving parts, such as its: