Safety Management Systems in Aviation

Safety Management Systems in Aviation
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Introduction
Many organizations ensure that their staff are made aware of Safety Management Systems implementation policies and procedures with an aim of minimizing the occurrence of adverse effects associated with risks. The Oxford English Dictionary define risk as "the possibility of danger, injury, loss or any other adverse outcome". This paper looks at the process of Safety Management Systems implementation and the role it plays in mitigating the various categories of risks in an Aviation environment. According to Stolzer et al. (2013), the objective of risk management is the enhancement of an organization’s business performance. Safety Management Systems in aviation are particularly important in assisting the corporate personnel to develop workable risk management programs and draft them in workbooks for learning by their staff (Stolzer, 2013).
Risk Elimination
Nobel C. of Harvard Business School says that risk elimination from an organization’s operations is an impractical. He explains that this is because risk involves decisions about something that has not happened yet. In such a case, all the facts about the decision that is being made are not known. That implies that the possibility of risk is high. Leaders have the responsibility of recognizing the potential consequences of a decision and make another decision pertaining to the expected outcome. Despite this, there are still high chances that the decision may turn false. (Hsu & Chen, 2010).
This is the reason why it is so difficult to eliminate risk from the operations. Trying to eliminate the risk of making a wrong decision may end up increasing the risk of making another wrong decision in some way. For example, a businessperson may decide not to put his or her business in a growth mode until sometime later when the owner thinks is the right time. This may make the business lug behind the competitor’s. In aviation, there will always be the security risk issues because risk elimination would mean not allow people fly. Examples of major risks and uncertainties that impacts on any business activities include; Governance Risks, Operational Risks, Financial Risks, External Risks and Compliance with law and regulation.
Safety Risk Management
Before Security Management Systems (SMS) are developed, the safety hazards must first be identified in the operations of the organization and controls to manage those risks put in place. The SMS being built or improved for an aviation environment must be risk based. For example, risks involved in helicopter operations are quite different from those of Regular Passenger Transport (RPT) services and therefore each SMS need to capture that
(Stolzer, 2013).
Safety Risk Management entails careful examination of that which can cause harm in your work and weighing whether you have taken sufficient precautions to prevent that harm from happening. It is evident that aircraft accidents ruins lives and affects business negatively because output is lost and assets destroyed. Legally, it is important to assess the risks in the workplace so as to save operations and implement a risk control plan in that environment. Safety Risk Management is a component of SMS and entails two fundamental safety based activities namely (I) Hazard identifications and (2) Risk assessment and their mitigation. Mitigation refers to the reduction of risk’s potential to cause harm
(Wilson & Binnema, 2014). Hazard refers to anything that can cause damage, harm, injury or any other negative consequence.
How Severity Values are Determined for Risk Assessment
The credible severity values assessments of hazard requires a detailed understanding of the operation’s environment and the functions to be executed.
Severity is determined by a five point scale as illustrated below:
1. Insignificant: s = 0.05 2. Moderate: s = 0.10 3. Medium: s = 0.20 4. Severe: s = 0.40 5. Catastrophic: s = 0.80 (Hsu & Chen, 2010).
The five point scale is used to determine the effect of severity of the risks as illustrated in the diagram below.
Table 1: The five point scale
The Risk Event Status or Risk Rating Matrix is then used to determine the severity values as illustrated in the diagram below
Fig 1: Showing Risk Event Status
Sources: /documentLibrary/media/Order/ND/VS%208000.1.pdf
The assessment of severity using the classification or Rating Matrix by the risk management team mostly requires the determination of the range of the severity and rather than the accuracy. There are several vital questions that the team needs to ask themselves in order to come up with an effective risk management program or strategy. Example; Are the chances below or above 50%? (Liling, et al. 2010). The use of a Data precision review is the other technique that can be utilized. Reliable unbiased data is required for qualitative risk analysis because the result of that analysis is so meaningful. The available data in terms reliability, integrity and quality is then evaluated against the understanding of the hazards associated with the risk.
Importance of understanding the hazards associated with a risk
Risk has been defined as the probability that a specified unsolicited event will occur as a realisation of a hazard. Risk Assessment is important in identifying the potential risks that could negatively impact on the operations of an organization. Hazard on the other refers to the potential of causing harm. Harm includes injury, damage or destruction of property, production losses, potential targets by criminal activities such as terrorists is also an example of a hazard. Hazards are identified using these methods;
* Comparative Methods, e.g. audits.
* Fundamental Methods: e.g. Operability and Hazard Studies, Energy Analysis, Deviation Analysis, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis.
Failure Logic: e.g. Fault and Event Tree-diagrams, Cause- Consequence diagrams (Stolzer, 2013).
Understanding the hazards connected to a risk is therefore important because it helps mangers to plan and implement the following approaches;
Risk Avoidance
This is a strategy that involves a conscious decision by the organisational management to avoid a particular risk completely by termination of an operation that yields the risk e.g. is the replacement of a hazardous chemical with a less risky one.
Risk Retention
The risk is retained by the organization but the losses caused by a hazard in case it happens is financed by the organization. Two things to consider here, knowledgeable risk retention and unknowledgeable risk retention which means that the leaders either have sufficient knowledge about the risk or don’t have it.
Risk Transfer
This encompasses a legal process that assess costs of potential losses from the involved parties and then financing them. Insurance is a good example.
Risk Reduction
Here, control measures are taken with the aim of reducing the risks systematically. The control measures should be in accordance to the risk control hierarchy
(Chen, & Chen, 2011).
Risk Assessment Balancing
Risk assessment involves a balancing between the potential for loss against the cost of controlling those loss from occurring. Managers are responsible of determining the level of funding and compliance to the risk the organization is willing to commit. Risk assessment is necessary because it enables a pro-active management performance towards the reduction of undesired surprises. Failure of deliberate management of these risks can result to a lack of confidence that hinders financial goals from being achieved (Ching-Fu & Shu-Chuan, 2012).
When evaluating the potential effect of risk in an organization, both qualitative and quantitative costs are considered. Examples of quantitative costs are cost of equipment, property costs, level of damage and the repair costs, lawsuit costs and dollar cash losses among others. Qualitative costs on the other hand refers to issues such as; loss of public trust, Loss of Endowment, company's reputation injury, increased legislation, law violation, bad public image and decreased enrolment all of which may have more serious wide-ranging negative effects on the organization.
After financial and compliance risks assessment, the next process involves appropriate control’s identification to be used in mitigating the risks. Aviation corporate personnel should focus on the high risky operations first. The tools that can be used to design the internal control systems include;
* Establishment of a Cont...