SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

What Does Documenting Aviation SMS Mean

Aviation safety management systems (SMS) documentation is probably the most critical component of aviation SMS design.

Documentation must be clear, accurate, current, and easy to access. Documentation reflects SMS compliance and SMS performance.

Though "documentation" is a simple idea, making sure your documentation is well managed is quite difficult in actual practice. This is because:

Why Quality Management Is So Important for Safety

Quality management systems (QMS) are the big brother of safety management systems (SMS). They are often depicted as having conflicting interests.

Unfortunately, this is true in many organizations because the bottom line (money) is pushed more than safety.

QMS and SMS don’t have to be in conflict. In fact, if given the time and resources, they can integrate and significantly strengthen your organization’s:

What Is the Life Cycle of Hazard and Risk Occurrence?

The life cycle of hazard and risk occurrence is the entirety of an adverse event that happens in your company.

This life cycle has distinct stages that you can identify in any given event.

To put it in James Reason Swiss Cheese Model terms, the hazard/risk occurrence life cycle is the holes, the cheese, the mice, and everything in between.

Understanding this life cycle helps you answer important questions about safety events like:

What Is Employee Safety Performance?

Roughly four out of every five aviation safety programs struggle with employee involvement. In many ways, the struggle is linked to the economics of SMS.

“Economics of SMS” is simply another way of saying that incentives play a crucial role in employee safety performance.

What Is Safety Culture in Aviation SMS

“Safety culture” is an ambiguous phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

Sometimes we use it when we talk about poor safety awareness when employees behave ignorantly on the ramp or around dangerous situations.

Sometimes we use it when we talk about corporate culture or lack of upper management support whenever we see competing business priorities and demands taking precedence over safety concerns.

What It Means to Move to a New SMS Database Program

Changing to a new SMS program is a challenge that organizations will inevitably face at least once, and probably more. What does this involve? Chang to new SMS program usually involves the following:

What Is an Aviation Safety Management System

A safety management system is, at its core, a business approach to safety. This means that, with SMS programs, you manage safety with similar methods for other parts of operations like quality management. It is a systematic and proactive approach to managing risk that includes:

• Goal setting;
• Planning; and
• Performance monitoring.

What Is an Emergency Response Plan (ERP)

The actions employees take immediately in response to an emergency will greatly affect the outcome of the emergency. In such situations, employees’ actions may largely be the deciding factor between catastrophic consequences and a scary but benign outcome.

Consequences can be

• financial,
• environment,
• material, or
• personal (i.e.) loss of life.

Managerial Style Is Critical for Safety Managers

How aviation safety managers conduct oversight is extremely important for the success or failure of the aviation safety management system (SMS).

The particular management style of a safety manager determines how willingly employees will interact with aviation SMS. Will they sincerely accept the demands placed on them by the SMS? Or will they rebel silently and look for ways to subvert the SMS?

What kind of style do you use as a safety manager?