When you identify a hazard within your organization, the first step is to analyze the risk. If the risk is high, then you need a control measure to reduce risk to acceptable levels.
Any change made to the existing system to reduce risk is a control measure.
Control measures can be simple or complex. Using a less hazardous chemical might be a simple control. Designing and installing a new ventilation system would be more complicated.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Accuracy is extremely important.
Much of the bureaucracy of safety management systems depend on correct and specific understanding of safety concepts. Misunderstanding definitions in SMS is synonymous with misunderstanding what a safety element is and can compromise how that safety element is:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Aviation SMS audits are necessary to ensure aviation service providers comply with established guidelines. These established guidelines may come from:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
The line between reactive and proactive safety workplaces is unfortunately not as concrete as anyone would like. If it were so obvious, many organizations would be far less reactive. The fact is that most cultures are less proactive than they would like to be.
Granted, there are some obvious indicators that an organization is only responding to accidents rather than actively trying to prevent them. For example, we generally understand reactive safety workplaces as only “putting out fires” as they come up. But accepting that reactive workplaces are only this is a rather superficial assessment.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
There are many aviation audit checklists available online.
While these checklists offer many specific tasks you need to perform, few checklists offer a broad overview of things that airports, airlines, and other aviation service providers should do to augment audit performance.
The purpose of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is to continuously improve safety performance while also improving the business' operational processes. This continuous improvement is expected to be realized by:
Both new and experienced aviation safety professionals sometimes have to ask themselves, what is a gap analysis and why am I using it?
The first thing anyone needs to understand about a gap analysis is that it is a process used by both new aviation safety management systems (SMS) and maturing SMS. This process is used by aviation service providers to determine:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Risk Assessments in aviation safety management systems (SMS) are how you qualify, quantify, and rank risk exposure for:
Risk assessments are absolutely central to decision-making in SMS, as all actions performed on the safety issue depend on the initial and subsequent risk assessments.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
I have recently seen a great rise in the interest and emphasis placed on safety culture in aviation safety management systems (SMS).
Until the last number of years, safety culture has been treated like an appendage or “bonus” to having a performant, successful aviation SMS implementation. Now, however, I see safety culture starting to pop up all over the place.
By definition, aviation safety culture is described as reflecting the real commitment to safety, or how people act when no one is watching.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
In November 2006, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandated that all member states implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS). To facilitate compliance, ICAO guided regulatory authorities and aviation service providers with the publication of the Safety Management Manual (SMM), now in the fourth edition as of 2019.
An aviation SMS implementation covers considerable territory, including, but not limited to:
During the issue management life-cycle, safety managers commonly conduct initial and residual risk assessments on reported issues. In most cases, the risk is a combination of both:
Occasionally, you will see organizations that also include "exposure" as a third dimension to their risk assessment. Based on our experience, only three to five percent of aviation service providers have adopted a three-dimensional risk assessment approach.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
These two on-demand videos offer:
