Aviation Safety
Management Systems

Modern safety systems will assess all potential root causes of an incident including a thorough drill upwards through the company to determine if there are other organisational or cultural factors at play. Clearly, management have to conduct a careful balancing act between protection and commercial production as shown in the diagram below (Source: James Reason). To much focus on protection can limit the operation to the point of bankruptcy, whereas overstretching limited resources to achieve high levels of production can cause mistakes and errors which may lead to serious incidents. By carefully balancing financial and safety management, managers can confine their operation within the "Safety Space".

In order to allow management to make defensible and correct safety-based decisions, they need to be presented with appropriate information to determine the risk landscape to which their organisation is exposed. This can only be achieved by the establishment of a robust reporting culture in which employees are fully engaged in the management of safety.

Since its first publication in 2013, ICAO Annex 19 requires all States to establish a State Safety Program which, in turn, suggests that all service providers within the airline industry must formulate their own safety management system (SMS) that not only encapsulates the requirements above but also includes the definition of a ‘Company Safety Policy’ and the active promotion of safety throughout the business.

The four required processes are Safety Risk Management, Safety Assurance, Safety Promotion and Safety Policy. All of these components in the SMS are underpinned by “Management Commitment” which is a fundamental requirement to establish a robust SMS within the business. The SMS will underperform if the management team fail to engage their workforce and encourage a healthy and robust reporting culture.

A good organisational culture is often the prime catalyst for the effectiveness of a safety management system and indeed, SMS implementation. An effective safety management system can only be achieved by the establishment of a good reporting culture, and this can only be delivered if an airline has an enterprise-wide approach to safety and a positive, supportive human resource management structure. 

The effectiveness of an airline’s safety management system (SMS) is often measured by the number of reports it receives, therefore, providing an environment and the right technology that encourages voluntary reporting is a critical dynamic in a fully functioning SMS.

Supporting Voluntary Reporting

The problem some airlines face is how to develop such an approach when voluntary reporting has traditionally been low. Although a difficult thing to achieve, it is possible with appropriate management commitment and communication; and it is acknowledged that the safest airlines in the world have a higher than average level of voluntary reports. One thing in common to all of these airlines is that Safety is taken seriously at an enterprise-wide level. 

There are three main areas that can have a material effect upon a good reporting culture:

• Safety Policy
  The organisation must produce and distribute a Safety Policy that is underwritten by the accountable manager (Usually the CEO). This Safety Policy will outline the corporate safety objectives and also identify those managers who have specific safety responsibilities and accountabilities.

• Safety Promotion
  Safety promotion is crucial. The workforce will never feel fully engaged in safety management unless the senior team promote their policies and objectives widely.

• Reporting Systems
  Providing the workforce with the means to submit reports easily is a vital element in a SMS. Additionally, it provides the safety management team with the ability to store, retrieve and analyse the submitted reports. This is known collectively as the Safety Data Collection and Processing System (SDCPS) and it forms an integral part of the SMS.
  
  

Culture Is At The Heart Of Safety

In general a failure to understand or address the culture element within an organisation, will mean that the safety management system will not perform as intended. As a consequence, the number of reports will be low, the level of hazard identification poor and the risk of incidents much higher. This in turn can have a dramatic effect upon the commercial effectiveness of the organisation, the ability to allocate limited resources effectively to reduce areas of potential safety and, at a corporate level, an impact upon the balance sheet. Culture is at the heart of an effective, efficient and commercially successful business.

Safety Performance Management is a key requirement for a functioning SMS. Implemented properly, it will give management an indication of how the business and its processes are performing in terms of meeting its safety objectives. Furthermore, the safety information provided will enable management to make informed and robust, data driven decisions. This is achieved through the identification and monitoring of SPIs that are (ideally) linked to the organisation’s safety objectives.

The diagram below (From ICAO document 9859) shows how safety performance management fits within the overall SMS of an organisation.

In order to achieve effective safety performance management (SPM), safety data has to be gathered, sorted, stored and recovered via the Safety Data Collection and Processing System (SDCPS). ICAO Annex 19 requires all service providers to develop and maintain an effective method for the collection, recording and formulation of actions for hazards in their operation.

This data is turned into useful safety information by completing various processing and analysis tasks, part of which is the recovery of useful information to determine whether or not the various SPIs are on track to meet their respective targets.

Safety Data Collection Choices

Clearly, each organisation will have differing requirements and priorities when it comes to safety data collection. Identifying and collecting the safety data should be aligned with the organisation’s need to manage safety effectively. In some cases, the SPM process will highlight the need for additional safety data to better assess the impact of a reported hazard and determine the associated risks.

Of importance for an SMS the collected safety data should be of a high quality and, ideally, in a format that allows for the easy dissemination to national authorities (for example the E5X format for ECCAIRS in EASA).

Equally it is essential that the hosted database is cyber secure, managed appropriately by a skilled IT services function and follows distinct principles around confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Image: Getty Images