The world’s authorities are working together to harmonize the way that they develop and implement state safety programs. This will lead to a better worldwide understanding of Safety Management Systems (SMS), and it is resulting in tools meant to make it easier for companies to implement SMS programs, and for national aviation authorities to develop and run their state safety programs. This is tremendously important for the next generation of aviation safety.
On the third day of the EASA/FAA International Safety Conference in Cologne, a panel discussed the activities of the Safety Management International Collaboration Group (SM-ICG). Andrew Larsen is the SM-ICG Chair, and he also works for Transport Canada. The SM-ICG was created to promote a common global understanding of safety management principles, and to facilitate their application across the international aviation community.
Amer Younassi, who manages the FAA’s Aircraft Certification International Division, was one of the SM-ICG founders. He intended the group to facilitate collaboration on the development of safety management and state safety programs, and he is particularly proud of the fact that the SM-ICG has grown to reflect a truly international community of experts.
Safety management is still new to the aviation community, and so it is critical to share the lessons that are being learned in order to facilitate success across the international community. The SM-ICG allows collaboration on the development of a common understanding of both SMS and state safety programs (SSP).
SM-ICG was founded in 2009 by FAA, EASA and TCCA, and SM-ICG has grown to a membership of 18 different regulatory authorities. ICAO serves as both an observer and an advisor to the group.
SM-ICG has been working to standardize terminology associated with SMS and SSPs, so that we can discuss SMS internationally without getting confused because we use the same terms to mean different things. Getting authorities to agree to common definitions has been a real success in the effort to harmonize international understanding of safety management. SM-ICG has also produced tools for safety performance measurement, both at the SMS level and at the state safety program level. Many authorities are using the SM-ICG tool as their primary tool for evaluating SMS programs, and the FAA used it to assess and endorse the NAS 9927 SMS standard. SM-ICG documents have been important to the development of FAA SMS guidance like FAA Order 8000.369 (Safety Management Systems) and FAA Order 8040.4 (Safety Risk Management Policy).
They are working on a number of projects, including ways to measure performance in a state safety program, hazard taxonomy examples, safety culture self-assessment tools, and a discussion of the role of the safety manager in the SMS program (ranging from a discussion of what is in their scope to recommendations about ways for the safety manager to communicate).
Younassi has found that the SM-ICG has been successful in developing tools that reflect an international experience with SMS and SSPs. He has found the SM-ICG tools to be useful to the regulators, and several of them are actively used by the FAA. These include SMS Inspector Competency Guidance, which has assisted the FAA in both identifying qualified FAA candidates and also in training the FAA inspector workforce. In fact, the FAA has developed job descriptions based on SMS Inspector Competency Guidance, and other countries are using this guidance to develop syllabi for inspector training.
Use of the SM-ICG tools is voluntary. The SM-ICG feels that successful SMSs and SSPs need to be customized to the implementers. But the tools being developed are meant to make implementation easier.
ASA asked about how SM-ICG can support smaller companies to ensre that SMS remains scalable. SM-ICG has recognized that there are very small entities in the industry, and this has always been on the mind of the participants. To support scalability, they’ve developed some tools with small businesses in mind, but Younassi admits that there are other tools that should be developed to specifically support the small business community. Larsen feels that one way that SM-ICG can assist smaller entities is to provide examples in their tools that focus on smaller SMS implementations.