Where Birds Don't Fly

A Safety Management System (SMS) is to take with you on the road, where action to safety is the focus point. SMS is not a tabletop exercise to conform to regulatory requirements, but a hands-on exercise to conform to safe operations. It might be tempting to leave SMS back at the office with the stack of may other regulatory requirement for any operation. This could be as air operator,  transportation operator or just as simple as a private vehicle operator. What counts for safety is how operations are managed with processes, or how things are done. Regulatory compliance keeps you floating, while safety management keeps you flying. History of safety records is not guarantee of a future high safety rating.  Changes in processes are at times minor and almost not noticeable, but accumulative with several minor unnoticeable process changes over time. Without process monitoring there is no way to discover issues which could lead to incidents.   When the regulatory compliant SMS...

Perimeters are directives, while Parameters are challenges. Both perimeters and parameters have their operational place in any organization with perimeter being task oriented and parameters are result oriented. The perimeters are established to stay within confined area.  Operational perimeters are evaluated to the limits of the perimeters. The issues are for tasks to be performed within the box, without deviation to venture outside the box. As long as all tasks are performed within the perimeters of the box, performance is acceptable.  This limits initiatives and operational decisions to assigned specific tasks. Tasks within the box may be applied in initial learning situations to instil knowledge and behaviour patterns, or to ensure regulatory compliance. This could be explained as when a person first learn to fly an airplane, the pilot-student has to stay within the box of assigned tasks to learn the aircraft's behaviour, and to understand the limits of operational regulato...

Building a safety case is not just a tabletop exercise, but a conglomerate of several operational hazard analyses of changes that may have safety impact on operations. The outcome of hazard analyses, or operational impact is unknown  until changes considered are entered into the blueprint tool and constructed as a safety case.  When a safety case is built and completed, it becomes a visualization of the future. Safety case is to buckle up. An airline may make a safety case for changes to new routes, aircraft or operational bases. Hazard considerations to route changes may include language barriers or regulatory operational standards. Other hazards to change in aircraft may be handling characteristics in manual mode, or display of automation. A new base may need to consider environmental hazards, or local workforce available. Hazards to consider for safety cases could be anything beyond limits of pre-determined assumptions. Airports may make safety cases for operators, and buil...