Safety Management Systems | SMS

What Is Involved in the Development of an SMS?

There are a number of steps involved in the development and implementation of a Safety Management System:

• Management Commitment: First and foremost, the senior management team of an organization must make a firm commitment to establish and maintain a positive culture of safety. Senior management must be committed to make the necessary changes in organizational structure, processes, policies and procedures to effectively implement the SMS.
• Establish the SMS Implementation Team: The senior management of an organization must identify a team of key personnel that will be responsible for the development and implementation of the SMS. These personnel must be provided with adequate resources, including adequate time to perform the SMS-related tasks and access to qualified SMS development consultants.
• Establish SMS Goals: The safety performance goals of the SMS should be established early in the SMS development and implementation process, and an early evaluation of policies and organizational structures necessary to obtain these goals should be performed.
• Perform a Gap Analysis: After the goals and recommended organizational structures have been identified, a gap analysis should be conducted to determine how much the organization's current performance and organizational structures differ from the established goals and recommended organizational structures of the SMS. This gap analysis will provide a roadmap for making necessary organizational changes and adopting needed policies, processes and procedures to implement the SMS and its safety control measures.
• Conduct Initial Hazard Identification & Risk Assessment: As part of the SMS development process, an organization must prepare a safety-risk profile. This is achieved by identifying hazards and evaluating them for the risks that they present to operations and personnel.
• Develop Safety Management Strategy: The safety management strategy defines the organization's approach to the management of safety. It includes describing the nature of the flight operations and/or manufacturing/repair operations of the organization, the safety-risk profile of the company, a list of identified hazards and measures taken to prevent or mitigate them, and methods put in place to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the safety control measures.
• Identify Safety Accountabilities and Responsibilities: All personnel in an organization must be made to accept ownership of their individual roles in promoting safety in the workplace. An SMS must clearly define the responsibilities and accountabilities of all job descriptions in the company.
• Establish Ongoing Hazard Identification and Tracking System: The organization must have in place a system to continuously identify new hazards and track the effectiveness of control measures in reducing incidents of accidents and mitigating their adverse effects.
• Develop Emergency Preparedness Plan: It is impossible to completely eliminate the possibility of accidents, so an effective SMS must address the possibility of an eventual accident with an emergency preparedness plan. This plan will address measures to be undertaken when an accident does occur with the goal of minimizing injury and adverse disruptions in service and other adverse impacts to the business.
• Conduct Staff Training and Education: It is important that personnel at all levels of the organization be trained on the aspects of the SMS that apply to their daily responsibilities.
• Track and Evaluate the Effectiveness of the SMS: To track the effectiveness of the SMS, the organization should identify key performance indicators and periodically conduct internal reviews of these indicators to evaluate whether the SMS is achieving its goals. Regular external audits of the SMS and its effectiveness should be part of this process.
• Amend Processes, Procedures and Policies: An effective SMS is dynamic – it must be constantly evaluated and updated, with new control measures put in place and obsolete ones eliminated, in order to adapt to changing operational environments and to identify and address newly identified hazards in the workplace.

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