SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What Is Proactive Safety Culture in Aviation SMS

The purpose of an aviation safety management system (SMS) is to formally manage operational safety risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). This objective will never be fully achieved unless aviation service providers maintain healthy safety reporting numbers.

In order to optimize safety reporting metrics, an operator must have a safety culture that continually promotes safety and encourages employees to report every potential safety issue, whether the issue is real or imagined. The rule of thumb should be "report everything and let the safety team determine the level of safety risk."

"Proactive safety culture" in aviation SMS simply denotes an operational environment whose employees and resources actively act upon likely safety concerns that have been identified and reported for risk management review.

What Is Risk Analysis in Aviation SMS?

Unless you are new to aviation safety management systems (SMS), safety professionals recognize that the objective of aviation SMS is to:

• Proactively manage safety using documented risk management processes;
• Identify potential operational safety hazards;
• Evaluate risk;
• Implement control measures that mitigate identified risk; and
• Continuously improve operational processes.

Things to Prepare for Aviation SMS Audits

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:

• Identifying hazards to operational safety;
• Reporting the safety hazard to management to be treated;
• Collecting and analyzing safety information; 
• Determining whether hazard's associated risk is acceptable; 
• Implementing or reinforcing risk controls to mitigate risk; and
• Continue to monitor system for hazards.

What Is an Acceptable Level of Safety (ALoS)

The objective of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is to

1. Proactively manage safety,
2. Identify and report potential safety hazards,
3. Determine risk to operational safety; and
4. Implement risk controls to mitigate identified risk.

When an aviation service provider evaluates their risk to operational safety, they have to ask themselves a very pointed, and sometimes uncomfortable question: "What is our risk appetite?"

The term Acceptable Level of Safety (ALoS) defines an aviation service provider’s minimum level of acceptable risk for a given safety issue. “Acceptable” describes the need for no further mitigatory actions on the part of the service provider for the safety concern in question. This determination will be made based on the probability and severity of the evaluated safety concern.

What Are Internal SMS Audits in Aviation, and Why Conduct Them

Internal SMS audits are an extremely important element in verifying the performance of every aviation safety management system (SMS). They’re also a neglected process in a surprisingly large number of smaller operators' SMS risk management schedule.

What an Emergency Response Plan (ERP) Is

The actions taken within the first 5 minutes of an emergency can largely dictate the severity of consequences. In this case, “severity of consequences” can involve catastrophic financial, environmental, or material damage, and/or major loss of life.

Employees need a plan of action to count on when emergencies strike in order to minimize damages.

An emergency response plan is a manual that companies use to address many different types of emergency situations. The manuals include:

• Who to contact;
• How to act; and
• Resources to use.

Making Decisions about QMS and SMS in Aviation Safety Management

Recently, there has been a significant rise in the interest of reducing data management complexity and increasing synergies by integrating quality management systems (QMS) and safety management systems (SMS) in the aviation industry. This is probably because many aviation service providers have already begun or have well developed SMS implementations.

Definition of Aviation SMS 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 provided guidance to 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:

• Safety accountabilities;
• Management responsibilities;
• Hazard identification and risk analysis;
• Risk management processes; and
• Employee SMS training.

To add structure to ICAO's SMS guidance, the SMM is broken down into four major components, which have since been fondly referred to as the four SMS pillars. These  SMS pillars are:

• Safety policy;
• Safety risk management;
• Safety assurance; and
• Safety promotion.

How SMS Affects Companies’ Finances

While the safety benefits are often stressed far more than the financial benefits of aviation safety management systems (SMS), this is a mistake. When companies benefit financially from a safety initiative, what this means is that they benefit financially because the safety initiative is actually improving safety.

Return on investment for aviation SMS implementations is actually not as confusing to calculate as you might think. When we are talking about return on investment, we are talking about how an aviation SMS affects companies finances.

When it comes to implementing an aviation SMS, there are two wonderful facts regarding SMS and finances:

• Effective aviation SMS initiatives are relatively inexpensive; and
• Negative safety outcomes are often extremely expensive, and preventing even just one accident per year can save organizations many millions of dollars.

First Thing to Prepare for Aviation SMS Audits

Audits can be extremely stressful. Especially if things haven't been going well in your aviation safety management system (SMS)  in terms of performance or implementation progress.

At this point, there's only one thing that you need to do before anything else:

• Relax.

No audit is going to be perfect. There are going to be findings. Obviously, the fewer, the better. The point is not to avoid findings altogether but to see continuous improvement:

• In the severity of findings;
• By not having recurring findings; and
• In the number of findings.