The process of aviation safety management systems (SMS), simply put, is the conglomeration of many small actions on the part of safety management teams, operational managers and employees.
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
Unless you have been living under a rock since November 2006, it is highly likely that you have heard about the required safety management systems (SMS) that were mandated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
Every person in a company should be concerned if their aviation safety management system (SMS) management is efficient and working as designed.
Management efficiency in aviation SMS implementations has significant stakes for everyone in the organization, as well as customers who use the company’s services.
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
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
It’s easy to get lost in the bureaucracy side of aviation safety management systems' (SMS):
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation
Aviation safety managers, especially at larger airlines and airports have considerable work to perform, including:
Topics: Risk Management Software
Aviation safety managers commonly tell me that audits become much less painful after switching over to their new aviation safety management system (SMS) database software.
This doesn't mean that their company always passes audits without findings, but auditors love that all SMS documentation requirements are managed within one centralized data management system instead of being scattered around in:
Topics: Risk Management Software
Aviation safety managers are hardworking professionals, and their daily work schedules can be hectic, challenging, and extremely busy. But for many safety officers – and I’m guessing you may be one of them – there may be times when things become pretty quiet on the "SMS front", as if everything is under control...finally. And a big sigh of relief comes.
Then you suddenly find yourself rubbing your hands together, wondering how to best spend your time. What can I do to add value to our aviation safety management system (SMS)?
Should I work on strengthening our safety culture? or
Maybe I should tidy up the SMS' documentation so an auditor won't have any concerns about how our reported safety issues have been treated?
Topics: Aviation SMS Implementation
If your company is like other aviation service providers, you will have a particular safety issue keep 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:
Is your recurring safety issue in the above list? Many of you will relate to crew-member fatigue as your top recurring safety issue. This may be due to:
How do you identify and document all the contributing factors that are related to your top recurring safety issues? What was the root causes? Do you know? Since this is a recurring safety issue, the root causes are obviously not being dealt with properly. How are you dealing with root causes in your risk management processes? Are they documented? Can management make fact-based decisions based on this documented information?
Topics: 3-Safety Assurance
In another post about safety management systems for the layman, I discussed some of the groundwork for what an aviation safety management system (SMS) is and who uses it.
But as a good friend of mine who is a safety inspector told me – and this is true, “I don’t tell people what I do. I just tell people I’m a Civil Engineer because that’s
Topics: 2-Safety Risk Management
These two on-demand videos offer:
