A safety management system (SMS) is a continuous improvement process that reduces hazards and

prevents incidents. It protects the health and safety of your employees and should be integrated into
everyday processes throughout the organization. Investing in an SMS makes a measurable impact on
your bottom line and can be viewed as a competitive advantage. The adoption of an SMS framework
and thoughtful implementation of the various facets can have significant impact on protecting
employees and enhancing your organization’s performance and profitability. 

People nothing gets implemented without people who are committed, engaged, and motivated; real
safety change can’t happen without a competent, skilled workforce. Planning -thinking ahead is half the
battle of implementation; planning for foreseeable risks and the administrative parts of a management
system will yield smoother rollouts and foster measurement of SMS success Programs – most companies
have EHS programs that identify and control hazards, monitor and measure operational impacts to EHS
performance, and eliminate deviations from the management system; individual programs must operate
as part of the entire system, not independently Progress – to avoid complacency, companies need to
periodically measure their compliance with regulatory and legal requirements, audit their SMS system,
and review SMS performance with upper management. Performance- measures of performance need to
be set and include both lagging indicators and leading indicators; adopting leading indicators and
evaluating safety metrics among the entire business performance metric landscape helps companies
solidify safety on equal footing with other key operational practices – adopting a mindset of “safe
operations” versus viewing safety apart from operations Every safety management policy should satisfy
some of the basic functional requirements to ensure safety of every ship. In short, a safety management
system would consists of details as to how a vessel would operate on a day to day basis, what are the
procedures to be followed in case of an emergency, how are drills and trainings conducted, measures
taken for safe operations, who is the designated person etc. A safety management system is a
systematic approach to managing safety, including organisational structures, accountabilities, policies
and procedures. An SMS is scalable so it can be tailored to the size and complexity of your organisation.