Phase 1 SMS Implementation Survey Results

Thank You for Completing Phase 1 SMS Survey!

We hope you find it valuable.

Let us review and provide relevant resources.

Who Is Your Accountable Executive?

Your accountable executive is, for all intents and purposes, the certificate holder. For most smaller operations, the accountable executive is the business owner, who will almost certainly be the certificate holder.

For medium-to-large corporations, the accountable executive will most likely be the CEO or one of the senior executives who has been delegated authority similar to that of the CEO.

Accountable executives at aviation corporations are responsible for determining various departmental budgets. They possess full executive control over organizational activities.

Airports that have the local council as the owner, the accountable executive will most likely be the mayor.

Specifying a single accountable executive ensures that this responsibility is not simply delegated to various department heads. In short, individuals responsible for SMS programs will have to decide whether to divert funds from operational activities to safety activities.

Having an accountable executive ensures:

Senior management cannot avoid responsibility for systemic failures due to ignorance;
All major safety-related findings are known by the accountable executive; and
The accountable executive is held responsible for safety deficiencies.

Everybody should know who is the Accountable Executive.

Your accountable executive should be visible in promoting SMS. They should be reviewing and signing the CEO Commitment to Safety.

Two CEO Commitment to Safety Templates

Accountable Executives should also sign the "Non-Punitive Reporting Policy."

Who Is in Charge of the SMS Responsibilities?

To ensure your SMS program operates as designed, it is essential that many tasks be delegated to personnel as appropriate. Safety programs that are run soley by the safety manager seldom work. SMS is a team effort.

Roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of each individual/position should be well defined in your SMS documentation. Lines of responsibility clearly understood. An organizational chart is effective to meet this requirement.

To document duties and requirements for particular roles, you should consider these responsibilities:

Establishing and maintaining a reporting system to collect safety related data
Conducting hazard identification and risk management analysis
Conducting periodic reviews to determine the effectiveness of the program
Developing and evaluating the results of safety initiatives
Monitoring industry safety concerns that could affect the organization
Determining the adequacy of training programs, and
Advising reporters of the results of event analyses.

Every employee should know who is in charge of the SMS program. If not, you may want to promote the org chart some more.

You may get some inspiration from these safety accountabilities templates:

Have You Done Your Gap Analysis?

The gap analysis allows aviation service providers to conduct a self-audit against an industry-accepted model. After completing the gap analysis, the safety management team will prepare an SMS implementation plan that addresses the shortcomings.

At the core of every gap analysis, there are two questions:

Where are we?
Where do we want to be?

The gap analysis is used to discover where to focus efforts on improvements.

For best results, the gap analysis should be done each year until you have reached Phase 4 of your SMS implementation.

If you performed a gap analysis more than a year ago, it is time to review it again and apply updates. These models may help:

Have You Described Your System?

A system description is the first prerequisite for developing an SMS program. Every system contains inherent potential safety vulnerabilities, which are characterized in terms of hazards. Your hazard identification process should identify only hazards that come within the scope of your system description.

Your system description should includes the interfaces within the system, as well as the interfaces with the larger systems of which the system being assessed is a part.

A detailed description of the system should include:

The purpose of the system;
How the system will be used;
The system’s functions;
The system’s boundaries and the external interfaces; and
The environment in which the system will operate.

We recommend that you use a template model, such as 5M or SHELL model.

It is easy to over do this and become bogged down in the details. Don't become alarmed. Your system description can be reviewed and updated as time passes. You may wish to start with a short narrative that answers these questions:

What is it that we do?
What do we do it with?
Where do we do it?
Who do we do it with?
When do we do it?

SMS Pro has these templates built into the Proactive Hazard Analysis Tool, which automatically generates the hazard/risk register.

Have You Developed Your SMS Implementation Plan?

Depending compay size and the complexity of your operations, SMS implementation plans may be developed by one person or a planning group with an appropriate experience base.

Planning groups should meet regularly with senior management to assess SMS implementation progress. The accountable executive must allocate resources (including time for meetings), commensurate with the task at hand.

Using a structured approach to implementing your SMS program is not only convenient, but necessary. An SMS implementation is expected to take several years. During that time, you can expect:

Employee turnovers;
Resistance to change;
Changing environmental and operating conditions; and perhaps
Different SMS auditors.

For that reason, your SMS system implementation will have to be very well documented and follow a plan. This plan will be broken out in phases, such as the ICAO SMS Implementation Plan (four phases), FAA SMS Implementation Plan (four phases); and Transport Canada SMS Implementation Plan (also four phases).

If you don't have an SMS implementation template, here are two industry ckecklists:

Do You Have a Safety Policy?

Accountable executives should also be signing off on the Aviation Safety Policy. If you don't have a safety policy, here are some templates. Your policies and procedures will need to be reviewed on a regular basis, so think about a review strategy also.

Safety Policy and Objectives

Besides having the core safety policy, there are other elements in the Safety Policy and Objectives component.

Safety policy and objectives component is composed of five elements:

Senior management establishes safety objectives, as well as the standards of safety performance for the organization. Safety objectives identify what the organization wants to achieve, in terms of safety management, and lay out the steps needed to achieve the objectives. We can call this your SMS action plan.

Standards of safety performance allow organizational behaviour to be measured. Both safety objectives and the standards of safety performance must be linked to the safety performance indicators (SPIs, a.k.a. KPIs), safety performance targets and the SMS action plan.

Communicating Safety Information to Employees

Your SMS program should communicate SMS objectives and procedures to all operational personnel.

Safety managers should communicate the performance of the organization’s SMS program through bulletins, newsletters and briefings.

Safety managers should also distribute:

Lessons learned from investigations; and
Case histories or experiences from both internal and external sources.

Safety performance becomes more efficient when operational personnel are actively encouraged to identify and report hazards. Safety communication therefore aims to:

Ensure that all staff are fully aware of the SMS;
Convey safety-critical information;
Explain why particular actions are taken;
Explain why safety procedures are introduced or changed; and
Convey "nice-to-know" information.

Here is a good resource for some best practices regarding safety communication.

Aviation SMS Tools to Manage All These Requirements

If you need tools to manage Phase 1 requirements, I recommend the Hazard Reporting Solution. This is a new product designed for small to medium-sized operators.