Safety Assurance

SMS Safety Performance

Monitoring and Measurement
• How are we doing vs. what we are looking to achieve?
• How can we find out if it’s working? Among others-
• Safety reporting (we will talk more about this in Module 4)
• Audits (internal and external- gap analysis)
• Internal safety investigations
• Informal employee interviews
• Facility walk-arounds
• Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs)
See Safety Performance Monitoring and Measurement presentation in Module 3 Resources
 The Management of Change
• Change brings risk, whereas managing change reduces the
risk
• Aviation organizations experience permanent change due
to expansion, introduction of new equipment, procedures,
etc.
• Changes can-
• Introduce new hazards
• Impact the effectiveness of risk mitigation
 The Management of Change
• External changes examples-
• Change of regulatory requirements
• Security

• Internal changes examples-

• New ownership
• Management changes
• New equipment
• New procedures
 The Management of Change
• A formal management of change process should-
• Identify changes (new hazards/risks) within the organization
which may affect established processes and services
• Prior to implementing changes, describe the arrangements to
ensure safety performance (risk assessments and
controls/mitigations)

See Appendix 13 in the Main Course Reference

Document for a Management of Change example
 Continuous Improvement of the SMS
• Continuing improvement aims at-
• Determining the immediate causes of below standard
performance and their implications in the operation of the
SMS
• Rectifying situations involving below standard performance
identified through safety assurance activities
• What can we be doing better?
Continuing Improvement is Achieved Through

Reactive Safety Activities

Proactive Safety Activities

Predictive Safety Activities

 Reactive Safety Activities
• It’s unfortunate that incidents and accidents happen—but they do,
and they typically provide us with some of the most detailed
information, through investigations
• Incidents, occurrences, accidents, etc. need to be investigated
• Corrective and preventive actions taken
• A simple investigation technique used to determine root cause(s) is
called the ‘Five Whys’

See Appendix 8 in the Main Course Reference Document for an Investigation Form example

See Appendix 12 in the Main Course Reference Document for a Corrective/Preventive Action Form example

See Appendix 7 in the Main Course Reference Document for a Five Whys Approach/Root Cause Analysis example
 Proactive Safety Activities
• What’s going on right now?
• Need a strong safety culture for this—especially if the voluntary,
non-punitive reporting system is going to be effective
• Hazard identification and risk analysis-
• ALARP principle
• Many sources of safety data, including-
• SMS gap analyses
• Safety audits
• Surveys
• Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs)
• Interviews
• Observations
• Reporting system
 Predictive Safety Activities
• Identify potential/future problems

• Uses normal operational data and modern data processing tools-

• These data allow us to see if we are “headed for trouble”
• Identify hazards and address the probability and/or severity of risks
associated with those hazards

• Must have full management support-

• It can be a challenge to get management buy-in. Why?
• You’re trying to sell management on an incident or accident that may never happen!
• That’s why you must use an evidence-based approach. Data. Data. Data!
Predictive Safety Examples

LOSA (Line Operations Safety Audit)

FDM (Flight Data Monitoring)

 Contracted Activities
• Companies contracting to you-
• Contractors may, or may not, have an SMS-
• Either way, their safety processes should be audited
• Contractors should be aware of your SMS and, at the very
least, be included in your safety reporting system
• It is important to include your SMS requirements in any
contract or service agreement!
 Contracted Activities
• Companies that you supply with products or
services-
• If you supply products or services to an organization that
operates an SMS, that organization may check that you are
operating an effective SMS
• You should be prepared for the organization to ask to review
your documentation or carry out an inspection or audit
End Of Unit