Where Birds Don't Fly

The other day when I was on my way to the store to buy swiss cheese and it was raining. I had opened my umbrella inside, walk under a ladder and a black cat crossed in front of me by the time I got to my car. My day was off to an unpredictable day. I purchased a block of swiss cheese and a package of sliced. I could not see the swiss cheese holes in the block, but I could see them in the sliced cheese, and all the holes were lined up. An unavoidable incident seems to be on the march in my direction today. I had opened an umbrella inside, walked under a ladder, black cat crossed in front of me and now all the holes in the swiss cheese lined up. And to make things worse, I embrace the principle that more is less and less is more.  An effective Safety Management System (SMS) is expected to run smoothly, and that safety will come by itself if we just do the right tings. The right thing is to find the holes in the swiss cheese and to stop the flow of accidents by plugging or diverting h...

A Safety Management System (SMS) that is inactive will leave a void for an uncontrollable system to take its place. An SMS includes a variety of tasks and some of them are a safety policy, a process for setting goals, measuring the attainment of those goals, hazards and for evaluating and managing the associated risks, a process for personnel to be trained and competent, a process for internal reporting, a process for analyzing of hazards, incidents and accidents and for corrective action plans, an SMS manual, distribution of the SMS manual, a quality assurance program, periodic reviews or audits, developing safety cases and any additional regulatory requirements. An SMS is a comprehensive system, which must be scaled to size and complexity to conform to regulatory compliance. The scale down requirement is a process to Smarten Up SMS.  Smarten Up SMS is not targeted to one area of the aviation industry, such as airports, but is a tool that can be applied to any specific regulatory ...