In 2006, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) came up with formal guidelines that govern the implementation of Safety Management Systems (SMS). The document is accessible to every safety management professional and is relatively easy to decipher. It breaks down a rather complex topic into four pillars or components of the SMS. These components are; safety policy and objectives, safety risk management, safety assurance, and safety promotion.
Safety Policy and Objectives
This entails a policy statement that outlines the commitment of senior management to safety. It also includes a statement of safety accountabilities that define employees' and managers' responsibilities towards safety (Stolzer, 2016) . It also stipulates the appointment of the overall safety manager, who will oversee the functions of SMS. Other components of this pillar include coordination of emergency response planning to ensure an effective response in a crisis.
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Safety Risk Management
This includes putting in place procedures to identify potential operational hazards, assess them, and take proper action.
Safety Assurance
This encompasses performance monitoring and measurement of the safety procedures. Its objective is to improve safety measures and keep up with safety information from external sources. It also gives guidelines on how to deal with management changes and operational risks. Safety assurance ensures proper policies, assessments, and controls are implemented.
Safety Promotion
Every airline must carry out safety training for each employee group and level of management. Operational personnel should be trained on proper safety procedures, assessing operational hazards, and reporting them.
These components, especially the second pillar, is crucial in risk management for airlines. Documented procedures to identify operational hazards, analyzing them, and assess their consequences are essential for airlines. The measure makes it possible to implement mitigating actions to deal with existing and potential hazards. Petitt (2017) shares a similar opinion that these proactive and predictive risk management procedures are necessary for every SMS program. They assist safety professionals to adopt similar processes that are crucial in mitigating risk and documenting reported hazards.
References
Petitt, K. (2017). SMS, safety culture, and the four pillars of safety applied to airline pilot training. International Journal of Aviation Systems, Operations, and Training , 4 (2), 45-61. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijasot.2017070104
Stolzer, A. J. (2016). Safety management systems in aviation. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315607504
