SMS Simplified

Human nature is to make the simplest things complex and incompatible with daily routines. Simplicity is not about removing anything or everything but about focusing on what is essential to achieve the desired outcome. Simplicity is not about sacrificing functionality but about making the system as user-friendly as possible while achieving its core objectives. It is an ongoing process that requires careful planning, evaluation, and refinement. Simplicity often leads to improved user satisfaction, easier maintenance, and more efficient operations. Finding the right balance between simplicity and functionality can be a continuous process of refinement.

A safety management system (SMS) for aviation is built on a few simple core principles. Conventional wisdom is that safety in aviation, both airports and airlines must be a priority. A priority refers to the relative importance or level of urgency assigned to a task, goal, or item when compared to other tasks, goals, or items. Prioritization is a common practice in various aspects of life, including work, personal life, and aviation SMS decision-making. 

Safety refers to the condition of being free from harm, danger, risk, or injury. It encompasses various aspects of life and environments, and its primary objective is to protect individuals, communities, and assets from potential hazards or threats. Safety measures and practices are implemented to reduce the likelihood of accidents, injuries, or harm and to create an environment in which people can live, work, and interact without undue risk. When safety is a priority the management of safety becomes a subjective matter. What is viewed as a danger to one person, may not be viewed as a danger to another person. Airport and airline operational safety must be defined as paramount to operations for processes to function within a safety management system.

There are differences between priority and paramount, but they are related terms that both refer to the importance or significance of something. Both are used in slightly different contexts and convey slightly different nuances. 

Priority is a noun that represents the state or quality of being more important or urgent than other things. It often refers to a specific task, goal, or objective that is given higher importance or preference over others. Priorities can be ranked or ordered based on their level of importance or urgency. For example, in a to-do list, tasks are prioritized from most important to least important, focusing on the most critical tasks first.

Paramount is an adjective that describes something as being of the highest or supreme importance, significance, or authority. When something is described as paramount, it means that it is the most important or essential thing in a particular context. This term emphasizes that nothing else should take precedence or surpass the thing described as paramount. Paramount is the supreme overarching objective supporting a safety policy, and a safety policy must be paramount for a simplified SMS to function.

While both priority and paramount relate to the importance of something, priority refers to items ranked by importance for processes to function and provide their expected output, while paramount is the authority by which an SMS enterprise is authorized by their accountable executive (AE) to rank items by importance and classify events within the safety critical areas and safety critical functions classification system. 

In the context of time management and task organization, setting priorities helps individuals or organizations determine which tasks or activities should be addressed first and which can be delayed or given less attention. Prioritization is a valuable skill because it allows individuals to allocate their time, resources, and energy efficiently to achieve their objectives and meet deadlines.

Priorities can be categorized in various ways, but a common method is using a scale such as high priority for goals that are critical and require immediate attention. These are often associated with important deadlines or significant consequences if not addressed promptly.

Medium priority are goals that are important but not as urgent as high-priority goals. They can be scheduled and addressed after high-priority tasks. 

Low priority are goals that are less critical and can be deferred if necessary. These are typically less time-sensitive and may not have immediate consequences if postponed.

Commonly applied hazard priority level action times are level 1 (immediately) level 2 (24 hours), level 3 (7 days), level 4 (28 days), level 5 (90 days), level 6 (12 months), level 7 (indefinite). High priority goals are levels 1,2 & 3, medium priority goals are levels 4 & 5, and low priority goals is level 6. Level 7 is a priority level beyond the foreseeable future.  

The specific criteria for setting priorities can vary depending on individual goals, organizational objectives, and the context in which decisions are made. Effective prioritization involves considering factors such as deadlines, importance, resources available, dependencies between tasks, and overall strategic goals.

Ultimately, the goal of prioritization is to ensure that the most important and time-sensitive tasks are completed first, helping individuals and organizations make efficient use of their time and resources to achieve their desired outcomes.

When an SMS incident report is received the occurrence has already happened and the onsite immediate corrective actions have been taken. An example are immediate tasks after a runway excursion. The immediate steps are to evacuate the aircraft, notify the airport operator who then activates the airport emergency plan. 

When an accountable executive receives the first occurrence report their immediate priority is to establish an emergency response center and communicate with local authorities, ensure comfort for passengers and their families, communicate with the flight crew and determine if the incident warrants a temporary suspension of operations. Within a day, the AE needs to notify Transportation Safety Board (TSB), and at the directive of TSB schedule equipment and crews to remove the aircraft for the airport operator to return the runway back to service. Within a week the AE responsibility, for both airports and airlines, is to verify that special cause variations are removed from operations. 

The next priority level is the medium priority level and accountable executives needs to produce a draft report within 28-90 days with a preliminary root cause analysis and recommended corrective action plans (CAP). Within 12 months of the incident both airports and airlines should have their preliminary report and CAPs designed, developed, and scheduled for implementation. 

A rush to judgement and pre-data root cause analysis is a hazard to aviation safety. It is tempting to provide answers when everyone is looking for quick solutions and the cause of an incident. The AEs (both airport and airlines) must refrain from providing untrue statements of the cause of and planned corrective actions. None of this is known until available data has been collected and analysed. A premature root cause statement is tampering with processes, it corrupts the processes, and it is overcontrolling of processes. Overcontrolling a process is more damaging to the output itself than leaving an imperfect process alone.  

Yes, it takes hard work and time to set up a simplified safety management system. However, when it is set up and adapted by the SMS, it becomes a simple task to monitor and keep track of special cause variations. SMS is made complex when operators, both airports and airlines, take short-cuts and remove items from their SMS. Removing SMS requirements adds burdens and work to the SMS, and it makes an SMS unreliable and without a definite purpose. Compare a simplified SMS to the cruise control system in a vehicle. It takes hard work to build it, but at the end, a cruise control system is use-friendly and makes it simple for the driver to monitor progress. 

Building a simplified safety management system involves a daily quality control system. Daily quality control is a prerequisite for the triennial required audit. A simplified SMS includes commitment and leadership, an SMS policy, hazard identification of hazards affecting operations and risk analyses and risk assessment. 

Analysis and assessment are two distinct, but related processes used in various fields to gather information, evaluate situations, and make informed decisions. 

Analysis involves the process of examining data, information, or a situation to gain a deeper understanding, identify patterns, and extract meaningful insights. Assessment, on the other hand, is the process of evaluating something based on specific criteria or standards to determine its quality, performance, or suitability. 

The nature of an analysis is a process that seeks to uncover relationships, trends, or causes and effects within a dataset or a problem. It may involve breaking down complex information into smaller components to facilitate understanding. The nature of an assessment is a structured approach and a specific process that involves measuring or quantifying aspects of a subject against predefined criteria. It is often used to make judgments or decisions based on established standards or benchmarks.

An analysis can be an ongoing or continuous process, and it may not have a fixed endpoint. It is often used to inform decision-making and problem-solving as situations evolve.

An assessment is typically conducted at specific points in time or at predetermined intervals to gauge performance or compliance with standards. It often leads to a final judgment or rating.

An assessment is to assess the value and the effect of a risk analysis and includes monitoring of the if the risk analysis predictions maintain its assigned path, and if the analysis output remains focused on the target. Within an SMS, the priority of a risk assessment is to evaluate likelihood, severity and exposure applied to a risk analysis. 

In summary, analysis is about understanding and gaining insights, while assessment is about evaluating and making judgments based on predefined criteria. 

The foundation of a simplified SMS is daily quality control, and includes risk mitigation, processes, incident reporting and Investigation, training and education, communication and performance monitoring and measurement.  

The output of a simplified SMS is continuous improvement, or continual improvement. Continuous improvement is to make adjustments, while continual improvement is to make changes. 

Other outputs from a simplified SMS are emergency preparedness, documentation and records keeping, processes conforming to regulatory requirements, personnel involvement, and reviews, evaluations, and assessments. 

A simplified SMS is for airport and airline operators to easily adapt to changing circumstances, which is the continuous safety improvements required by an SMS.

When design and development of a simplified SMS is completed, and systems are implemented, a simplified SMS is to remain resilient, adapt to changing conditions, analyse what goes right every day, monitor for special cause variations, and adjust or make changes to processes.  

A simplified SMS is strategy applied to monitor progress. 

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