Investigations, Recommendations and Safety Management Systems Thomas A. Farrier, MO3763 Senior Safety Analyst JMA Solutions, LLC June 29, 2017 Tom Farrier has been a member of ISASI for more than twenty years. He began his aviation safety career as a U.S. Air Force flight safety officer, during which he served as an on-scene investigator as well as performing prevention and programmatic duties at wing, command and Headquarters levels. Since 2005 he has worked as a government contractor on a variety of aerospace safety matters. He currently is Senior Safety Analyst for JMA Solutions, LLC in Washington DC. The views expressed in this paper are his own and do not reflect official positions of JMA Solutions, LLC or its clients. Introduction Current perspectives on safety management systems (SMS) vary widely from one country to the next, especially with respect to how they are used in the aviation domain. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) performed a valuable service to the worldwide civil aviation community with the publication of the first edition of Document 9859, Safety Management Manual (SMM), in 2006. This landmark document gathered together a host of processes that collectively offered an organized structure within which safety efforts on the part of individual States and other interested parties could be developed. As it stated in its Objective (paragraph 1.2): The objective of this manual is to provide States and product and service providers with: a) an overview of safety management fundamentals; b) a summary of ICAO safety management SARPs contained in Annexes 1, 6, 8, 11, 13 and 14; c) guidance on how to develop and implement an SSP in compliance with the relevant ICAO SARPs, including a harmonized regulatory framework for the oversight of product and service providers’ SMS; and d) guidance on SMS development, implementation and maintenance.() ICAO’s intent in assembling a list of SMS guidelines was to offer a set of management processes that could be adopted by State safety programs (SSP), not to suggest other preventive activities should be excluded, discounted or downplayed. However, it has become clear that an unintended outcome of ICAO’s various moves to consolidate guidance on SSPs has been to downplay the role of accident investigations in the SMS environment, or even to disconnect them entirely from other preventive processes.
Investigations, Recommendations and Safety Management Systems Thomas A. Farrier, MO3763 Senior Safety Analyst JMA Solutions, LLC June 29, 2017 Tom Farrier has been a member of ISASI for more than twenty years. He began his aviation safety career as a U.S. Air Force flight safety officer, during which he served as an on-scene investigator as well as performing prevention and programmatic duties at wing, command and Headquarters levels. Since 2005 he has worked as a government contractor on a variety of aerospace safety matters. He currently is Senior Safety Analyst for JMA Solutions, LLC in Washington DC. The views expressed in this paper are his own and do not reflect official positions of JMA Solutions, LLC or its clients. Introduction Current perspectives on safety management systems (SMS) vary widely from one country to the next, especially with respect to how they are used in the aviation domain. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) performed a valuable service to the worldwide civil aviation community with the publication of the first edition of Document 9859, Safety Management Manual (SMM), in 2006. This landmark document gathered together a host of processes that collectively offered an organized structure within which safety efforts on the part of individual States and other interested parties could be developed. As it stated in its Objective (paragraph 1.2): The objective of this manual is to provide States and product and service providers with: a) an overview of safety management fundamentals; b) a summary of ICAO safety management SARPs contained in Annexes 1, 6, 8, 11, 13 and 14; c) guidance on how to develop and implement an SSP in compliance with the relevant ICAO SARPs, including a harmonized regulatory framework for the oversight of product and service providers’ SMS; and d) guidance on SMS development, implementation and maintenance.() ICAO’s intent in assembling a list of SMS guidelines was to offer a set of management processes that could be adopted by State safety programs (SSP), not to suggest other preventive activities should be excluded, discounted or downplayed. However, it has become clear that an unintended outcome of ICAO’s various moves to consolidate guidance on SSPs has been to downplay the role of accident investigations in the SMS environment, or even to disconnect them entirely from other preventive processes.