MS Myth Busting and Realities – Steven Bentley MD Sofema Aviation Services www.sasssofia.com discusses SMS in an Operational Context.
SMS is all about Compliance ? – Its not ! – Its 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 being the management of risk generated by Contract or Sub Contracted organization particularly where this may directly impact the organization.
SMS is just an extension of the Quality System ? – Its not ! – Safety Auditing Is very different in fact Safety Auditing is almost holistic in that it is looking at the potential exposures, faced by the Organisational system.
SMS is owned by the SAFETY Manager ? – Its not ! – The SMS System is owned by the Accountable Manager but each Post Holder is responsible for the effective delivery of the SMS within there business area. Sometimes called a Top Down Approach.
An SMS can be “installed within a short period of time” – It can not ! It is going to take more than a year and near 18 months to 2 years to bed in your SMS system.
SMS Realities
One size definitely does not fit all, it should be scaleable and appropriate for the organization.
SMS is a proactive and integrated approach to Safety. It should be integrated into the management system the  organization.
To be effective it has to describe and to 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 which 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 of 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
Whist 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).
Sofema Aviation Services offer several SMS trainings and implementation workshops please see www.sassofia.com or email office@sassofia.com for details.
Tags:
Aviation Safety, Operations Environment, Risk Management, Safety
