Over the next two years, Safety Management Systems (SMS) will be required for more than 200 U.S. locations designated as Part 139 airports. This means each of these airports will need to formally establish a set of prevention-focused processes and procedures aimed at transforming how the airport thinks about safety and accidents.

Developed more than 30 years ago for the railroad, petrochemical and nuclear power industries, SMS methodologies are now widely used in many international airports. Rather than focusing on isolated safety incidents, these methodologies shift attention to the gaps or weaknesses that can lead to accidents. The goal of an SMS is to create a safety culture that encourages reporting and learning from failure. By creating a system for tracking and eliminating risks, it also offers opportunities for continuous improvement and doing more with less.

When the development process is complete, each of the airports will have produced an SMS manual that includes four basic elements:

• A safety policy. All airport operators say that safety is their airport’s first and highest priority. SMS regulations require them to put it in writing. That’s the purpose of a safety policy, a document where an airport declares its commitment to safety, defines its safety objectives and establishes clear standards and expectations for safe behavior. A safety policy also makes airport leadership accountable for safety. For an SMS program to be taken seriously, leaders must demonstrate their commitment to making safety their highest priority. To be successful, an SMS cannot reside in the safety department, but must permeate the airport from the top down. Managers must lead its implementation.
• Safety risk management processes. The SMS manual must lay out how the SMS will work in everyday practice. It includes processes for identifying hazards, assessing risks and designing risk mitigation strategies. Often, these processes may employ or link to existing GIS platforms and other information-tracking databases already in use, minimizing what might otherwise seem like a major new initiative. The SMS also provides a structure for decision-making based on the severity of a given risk and the likelihood of it leading to a safety incident. Just as important: It describes the process for reporting hazards and how that information will be disseminated and tracked.
  
  Consider how this process might work in real life. Let’s say an airport security employee observes foreign object debris (FOD) on an airfield. Prior to implementing an SMS, the employee might simply remove the FOD and go on with regular daily activities. With an SMS, the employee would also log a report, tagging the FOD’s location, all of which would be routed immediately to the accountable executive, who could use the SMS to watch for patterns of such incidents, identify their source and address the root cause.
• Safety assurance checks. An SMS needs checks and balances, and the document’s safety assurance component provides them. Fearing reprisal, employees can be reluctant to self-report their own mistakes or convey those of co-workers. Best practices, therefore, call for SMS processes that are voluntary, impartial and confidential. Safety actions are resolved through corrective action rather than punishment or discipline, with feedback on issues and corrective actions reported at public and committee meetings. All are needed to encourage reporting, promote productive communication and create a proactive safety culture. By demonstrating safety management capability before failures occur, verifying mitigation effectiveness and providing an interface for knowledge sharing, stakeholders everywhere can see what is being done to make the airport environment safer.
• A safety promotion framework. Safety cultures aren’t created in a vacuum. Airports need a framework that supports continuous learning and processes that constantly promote safety at every level, from executives to those performing the routine tasks required for airport operations. That could mean a safety moment at every meeting and a safety-first approach to every issue. Whatever form safety training takes, records should be maintained. The SMS can also identify ways to incentivize, rather than punish, employees for reporting safety issues. A just safety culture approach is essential for employees to take ownership of mistakes that could have resulted in an incident. While a safety culture is not easy to quantify, an airport will know it is on the right path when people begin to identify and report hazards proactively.

The first steps to creating an SMS are relatively simple. They involve restating the airport’s commitment to safety, identifying accountable executives and naming a safety management team. It’s important to involve as many staff members as possible in the SMS process, so that they develop a sense of ownership in and responsibility for the program’s eventual implementation. To sustain staff buy-in, airports may wish to adopt the manufacturing and construction industries’ safety-first mantra and reserve time at every meeting to address relevant safety topics and reinforce that safety is the airport’s highest priority.

The aviation industry earns travelers’ trust by demonstrating, year after year, that flying is one of the safest forms of travel. With passenger demand continuing to grow, the regulations and responses needed to maintain or further improve that level of safety must keep pace. An effective SMS strategy provides an airport with a scalable foundation upon which to build a 21st century safety culture. It formally acknowledges an organization’s responsibility for safety and gives further credence to the safety-conscious culture for which airports are already known.

In practical terms, the value of an SMS is clear. Not only can it reduce the likelihood of accidents but, as other industries have proven, it also can change an organization for the better. It provides a process for monitoring and addressing safety issues. By removing and mitigating hazards, it helps streamline airport operations as well, enabling operators to provide more consistent performance. All contribute to stakeholder satisfaction and airport success.