Aviation Safety Management Systems SMS – Time for a Reality Check

Let’s get real!

Question – Is SMS all about Compliance?
Answer – No – It’s about Managing Risk.

Safety management goes far beyond traditional compliance-led approaches to auditing.
So a Safety Management System has to identify potential safety risks and Hazards. At the heart of any effective Safety Management System is a formal Risk Management process that identifies hazards and assesses and mitigates risk.
The next step is to mitigate or manage any risks identified to an acceptable or tolerable level. An essential aspect is the management of risk generated by contract or subcontracted organizations, particularly where this may directly impact the organization.

Question – Is SMS just an extension of the Quality System?
Answer – No – Safety Auditing is very different. In fact, Safety Auditing is very subjective, almost holistic. Safety Auditing is looking at risk, or in other words, the potential exposures faced by the Organisational system.

Question – Is SMS owned by the SAFETY Manager?
Answer – No – The SMS System is owned by the Accountable Manager but each Post Holder is responsible for the effective delivery of the SMS within their business area. Sometimes called a top-down approach.

Question – Can a safety management system be “installed within a short period of time”?
Answer – No – It is going to take more than a year and nearly 18 months to 2 years to bed in your SMS system.

Please consider the following SMS Realities:
One size definitely does not fit all; it should be scalable and appropriate for the organization.
SMS is a proactive and integrated approach to Safety. It should be integrated into the management system of the organization.
To be effective, it has to describe and educate the entire workforce as to the structure and scope of the organization, available resources, staff accountabilities, authorities, and responsibilities.
A real challenge facing any organization is how to set and monitor the safety performance of the organization. Essentially, this is a process that is data-driven, so one measure of the effectiveness of the SMS is how it gathers data.
This is especially true in the operations environment.

Key Elements of an effective SMS
The SMS should comprise the following four key components:

a) Safety Policy and Objectives
b) Safety Risk Management
c) Safety Assurance
d) Safety Promotion

Each of the above elements is critically important, and all must be visible and active within the SMS System.

Key Personnel in an effective SMS
Whilst the individual business owners are responsible for safety management, an SMS champion is essential for the health of the SMS system. (This person may be the Safety Manager or he may be the Quality manager or another person; the important point is to ensure effective management of the entire process.)

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