Confidence in aviation safety management systems (SMS) is trust that the SMS implementation fulfills its obligations. The obligations of SMS include, of course, safety. But they don’t just include safety. The fact is that aviation SMS implementations that set out to only satisfy good-looking safety data or regulatory compliance will plateau or even implode before long.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
If your company is like other aviation service providers, you will have a particular safety issue that keeps coming back time and again. Corrective actions may be implemented or the safety issue isn't severe enough to warrant too much attention. Your recurring safety issue may be:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
The things that often hurt aviation safety management systems (SMS) are less symptomatic of the bureaucratic side of formal SMS implementations than they are the type of working environment that management teams cultivate.
Accountable executives, with the assistance of aviation safety managers may create solid policies, but if they don’t take the secondary steps to adequately integrate the relationships between-
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Healthy aviation safety culture results in safety performance.
Other than the bureaucratic elements of SMS, you could even make an argument that safety culture is safety performance. In aviation safety management systems (SMS), safety performance monitoring and measurement are required.
How do you measure safety culture performance?
How do you determine safety culture performance is improving?
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
The majority of aviation service providers are required to implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS) per the November 2006 ICAO mandate. This is a requirement. SMS implementation is not optional for most operators.
Just as the SMS implementation is not optional, employees do not have the luxury of shirking their duties and responsibilities to the SMS.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Occasionally aviation safety managers will want to do a turn and pivot with the direction of their aviation safety management system (SMS) implementation. What this looks like is restructuring.
When safety managers decide to restructure an aviation SMS implementation, it means changing and updating the bureaucratic structure of the SMS and possibly some of the SMS' documented risk management processes.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
We are generally aware of the more straightforward indicators of unhealthy aviation safety management systems (SMS).
Things like:
There are several other data-supported indicators of course, but you get the idea.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
A true aviation SMS implementation takes years and a lot of hard work to effect lasting change. SMS implementations can take considerably longer due to:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Good aviation safety auditors play a vital role in the ability of an aviation safety management system (SMS) to identify
Furthermore, safety auditors provide oversight to ensure regulatory and contractual obligations are fulfilled. This oversight is one method of data collection in an SMS' Safety Assurance (SA) component.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Proving to stakeholders that your aviation safety management system is working is simply a matter of showing that the primary goal of SMS is being achieved - namely, that:
There are several prerequisites for being able to show that safety is being improved as a result of SMS and employee involvement:
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
These two on-demand videos offer:
