SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

How Much Risk Are You Taking On?

How much risk are you will you willing to accept?

This is one of the most critical questions that every aviation service provider needs to answer. The answer will influence every single risk management activity in the operator's aviation safety management system (SMS).

What is your risk appetite? Not surprisingly, our risk appetite changes based on a variety of factors that require constant monitoring, including:

• Competition;
• Your product or service life-cycle;
• Organization's financial situation; and
• Environmental factors, like the economy.

Why You Need to Monitor the Effectiveness of Control Measures

Control measures are the heart of your aviation safety management system’s (SMS) risk mitigation efforts. You may call your "control measures" either:

• Risk controls; or
• Simply "controls."

Winter Is Coming - Move Fatigue Upward in Hazard Register

The Northern Hemisphere is blanketed in winter, which involves, cold, ice, many long nights and grey days.

For human fatigue that means two things:

• More melatonin production
• Seasonal depression

Winter fatigue is a real, medically proven problem that affects many people.

Purpose of Continuous Improvement in Safety Assurance Pillar

In every aviation safety management system (SMS), the accountable executive is responsible for ensuring the SMS is properly implemented and performing in all areas of the organization. The intent is not for the aviation SMS to reach some ideal "plateau of safety" and then maintain the "ideal safety level." Far from it!

The purpose of the aviation SMS is to demonstrate that the organization can proactively manage safety year-after-year, audit-after-audit.

As your SMS matures, your ability to collect and analyze safety data will increase. Your safety management capabilities are expected to gradually become more sophisticated. Furthermore, SMS regulatory auditors will have higher expectations of your SMS as more data has been collected, or should have been collected.

How will you react to these demands to demonstrate continuous improvement?

Safety Promotion as an Aviation SMS Pillar

Since November 2006, ICAO mandated that aviation service providers implement formal aviation safety management systems (SMS). The objective of the aviation SMS is to:

• Proactively manage safety,
• Identify potential hazards,
• Determine operational risk, and
• Implement risk control measures; 
• Continuously monitor system for hazards; and
• Demonstrate continuous improvement of the SMS.

Properly implemented aviation SMS follow the ICAO standard. The SMS structure is based on four components (or pillars) and twelve elements. The four components are:

1. Safety Policy;
2. Safety Risk Management;
3. Safety Assurance; and
4. Safety Promotion.

What is Safety Assurance in Aviation SMS

In order for an aviation safety management system (SMS) to be effective, the SMS must be monitored to provide assurance to managers and regulatory authorities that the SMS is both

• implemented correctly, and
• working as designed.

An ICAO compliant SMS is structured around four main components, which are also known as the Four Pillars. The third aviation SMS component is Safety Assurance (SA). The primary purpose of safety assurance is to demonstrate the SMS remains functional and alert management of substandard safety performance. Substandard safety performance is corrected under the direction of the Accountable Executive.

Why Classifications Are Important in Risk Management Activities

The objective of aviation safety management systems (SMS) is proactively manage safety using structured risk management processes.

Once operators have these processes in place, it is the civil aviation authorities' (CAA) expectation for aviation service providers able to use all four SMS components (also known as pillars) to enhance their capability to identify safety issues and spot trends before they result in a

• near-miss,
• incident, or
• accident.

Classifications are the bread and butter for organizing the SMS implementation's accumulated safety data. This accumulated data may easily encompass five to ten years' worth of safety information.

Without proper organization, the value of your safety data is greatly reduced. Yes, the data still has value, but considerably more effort will be required to perform meaningful data mining activities. This holds true not only with your future predictive risk management activities, but also your day-to-day reactive and proactive risk management activities.

What Is Data Mining in Aviation SMS?

Data mining is a critical, intermittent risk management activity safety managers need to perform in their aviation safety management systems (SMS) to organize, understand, and process collected safety data acquired during the organization's risk management processes.

Why It’s Important to Understand Difference between Assessment and Analysis

In aviation safety management systems (SMS), one of the main activities that senior managers and safety teams will undertake will be to

1. identify hazards; 
2. evaluate risk associated with these hazards; and
3. determine whether existing risk controls are adequate.

Hazard Risk Assessment and Hazard Risk Analysis are central components of the highly inter-related Safety Risk Management (SRM) and Safety Assurance (SA) processes.

Just as having a correct understanding of various risk management definitions, understanding the difference between analysis and assessment is important to ensure:

• Accuracy of decisions;
• Efficient risk management actions; and
• Proper workflow as hazards are reviewed, treated and monitored in the aviation SMS.

Time to Be Honest about Your Aviation SMS Implementation

Creating successful aviation safety management systems (SMS) requires a great deal of honesty on the part of:

• accountable executives;
• operational department heads;
• safety management teams; and
• front-line employees.