Sofema Aviation Services (SAS) www.sassofia.com considers the building blocks of an FAA-compliant aviation Safety Management System (SMS)
Introduction
SMS is a Management led, formal, top-down, organization-wide approach to:
- Managing safety risks and
- Assuring the effectiveness of safety risk controls.
- Includes the following elements:
o Procedures,
o Practices, and
o Policies for the management of safety risk.
In essence, an aviation SMS introduces an evolutionary process in system safety and safety management.
- SMS is a structured process that obligates all organizational business areas to manage safety with the same level of priority that other core business processes are managed.
- Aviation safety should be managed proactively by all stakeholders.
- Safety management benefits the total aviation system by strengthening traditional risk control practices and ensuring safety risks are managed in a systematic way.
- Safety management systems also allow room for innovation and flexibility:
o To consider an effective SMS is less about describing what to ‘do’ and more about how to ensure we can ‘achieve safety’.
More about the Objectives of an SMS?
To provide a structured management approach to control safety risks throughout the Business. Effective safety management must take into account all of the organization’s specific structures and processes related to the safety of operations.
SMS provides the following features:
- A structured means of safety risk management decision-making.
- A means of demonstrating safety management capability before system failures occur.
- Increased confidence in risk controls through structured safety assurance processes.
- An effective interface for knowledge sharing between regulator and certificate holder.
- A safety promotion framework to support a sound safety culture.
Concerning SMS Standards within our Aviation Industry
Standards and requirements are structured mainly as objective regulations.
- They are created in a way to emphasize more on “what to do” rather than “how to do it”.
- The reason behind this is to create standards which are set in a way that accommodates a wide variety of types and sizes of organisations.
- Standards are designed to allow operators and service providers to integrate safety management practices into their individual operational models.
Development of an Effective Aviation Safety Management System
Effective implementation of an SMS provides the organization’s leadership team with a structured set of tools which should (if managed proactively):
- Meet the organisation’s responsibilities related to safety regulatory obligations as defined by the regulator (FAA).
- Support an internal SMS-led optimization program which has the potential to lead to real and meaningful savings and efficiencies throughout the business processes.
Development begins with the organizational safety policy defining the generic principles upon which the SMS is built and operated and outlines the strategy by which we will achieve acceptable levels of safety within the organization.
Next Steps
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Sofema Aviation Services www.sassofia.com & Sofema Online www.sofemaonline.com offer Safety Management System Training as Classroom, Webinar or Online courses. Please see the websites or email team@sassofia.com
Tags:
Aviation Industry, Aviation Leadership, aviation safety, Aviation SMS, FAA, Maintenance of the Safety Management System (SMS), Safety Risk, SAS blogs, SMS, SMS Standards
