The basic fact is that truly judging the effectiveness of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is tough.
To merely judge the effectiveness of a program based on how well it meets compliance sounds prescriptive at best.
Judging a program based on a number of incidents and other such numeric data is terribly inadequate. It doesn’t take into account so many other factors that can reveal an SMS' health, such as:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Underlying causes in aviation safety management systems (SMS) are the bridge between reactive and proactive risk management.
Underlying causes are the “input” for safety issues because they reinforce the actions and behaviors that cause incidents to happen.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Different organizations will have different requirements when they review safety issues. Whether or not you are reviewing low-risk issues is up to you. While we recommend reviewing all issues, the reality is that due to time and resource constraints, this is not always feasible.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Safety performance monitoring is an essential component of aviation safety management systems (SMS). And by “essential,” performance monitoring is like your SMS implementation's immune system.
When performance monitoring is not handled well, your safety program will wither. Worse yet, your operating certificate may be in jeopardy.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Plan Do Check Act is a simple but effective process to use when implementing risk controls through corrective-preventative actions. The PDCA process is initiated after you discover some deficiency/weakness in your SMS that poses an unacceptable level of safety, such as after an aviation SMS audit, reported safety concern, or trend analysis.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Aviation safety managers are tasked with a Safety Assurance (SA) element labeled "Continuous Improvement." Not many aviation safety management systems (SMS) training courses go into much detail about "Continuous Improvement" which leaves many safety managers confusedly scratching their heads.
Safety Assurance is the third ICAO component or pillar of an ICAO-compliant SMS framework. Annex 19 - Safety Management and the four components are described in detail in ICAO's Document 9859.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Leading indicators in aviation safety management systems (SMS) are:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Passing aviation safety audits is absolutely critical for safety managers, not to mention the accountable executive who is ultimately responsible for aviation safety management systems (SMS) performance.
Their jobs may depend on satisfactorily managing both:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Aviation safety managers must be prepared for a never-ending chain of audits. This is a fact of life, whether you are working at:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
An internal aviation safety management system (SMS) audit is a process you used to verify that certain actions are taking place in your SMS.
Audits are a safety assurance activity that is most commonly used to broadly assess whether or not aviation service providers can demonstrate continuous improvement of the SMS.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
These two on-demand videos offer:
