In the dissertations of these last months that have passed in a breath of surprise blurred with curiosity, we are sitting at a table to discuss the status of the famous Operational Safety Management System in civil aviation companies in our country.
The context in which the comments run allows us to filter not only the adulthood of the faces but also the capitulation of a common and categorical statement: SMS does not exist in my company!
We are faced with a sad and shameful surrender like all of them for this defeat that infringes us precisely the essence of this tool that ICAO demands for a decade. In many of these companies, there is no system or management. Only traditional safety, that is always there, which demands to be careful and nothing more.
I remember the first edition of ICAO Document 9859 in which it was requested not to make up safety with records. That is not the purpose of safety nor should it be its final condition per se, but more than several organizations have been doing exactly that for a long time due to complacency that we explain and understand all in the courses of Human Factors.
After the first blow received and trying to restore myself, I try to produce sanity and ask at what stage of SMS implementation these organizations are. I cannot assure you that my question achieved its purpose but I received the answer from one of the Responsible Managers in this perfect painting for a treatise on Aviation History. The grief in his gesture brought me the answer I received in a distorted way “We’re in stage three, as everyone is supposed to be, Sergio.”
We followed the meeting and the questions bubbled like a teapot under the heat of a new but enlarged prosecutor’s passion. Before all of them, I only received the following negative responses:
- Do you all know and understand the Safety Policy?
- Does everyone know what and how to report unsafe conditions and / or practices?
- Is there a protocol for the treatment of these reports?
- Does risk management intend to detect the quality of existing defenses and generate new, more vigorous and effective defenses?
- Are the results of the assessed risks as well as the investigations communicated to the staff?
- Has the company managed to get its employees to read safety publications with interest? Does anyone verify their understanding and implementation?
- Are the drills carried out as planned to generate improvements in the established procedures?
- Is there an effective, direct and interested monitoring or follow-up by the Manager Responsible for Operational Safety?
- Do SMS audits seek to proactively detect gaps in the safety system or only generate compliance records?
- Does the company have a comprehensive safety orientation or do they consider prevention to be the exclusive task of the Safety Management?
- Does the Safety Manager fulfill an active role in safety management or is it just an additional bureaucratic instance but with a traditional approach?
The whirlwind of the questions among all the participants and after all the frustration I dared to believe him. Your SMS does not exist. How much does safety cost in this company? How much commitment does safety represent here? We have won the traditional culture and its anachronistic context where there is no planning or monitoring with a demonstrable methodology. We have been invaded by safety gurus who can brilliantly recite documents or safety references, but which in practice cannot translate the principles or fundamentals of safety into effective management protocols. Requirements-free adaptations by operational experts without management experience are also a factor that must be taken into account.
I left the abstraction for a moment and remembered an interview I had some time ago with the wife of a crew member who died in an aviation accident. And these memories always assail me. A few years earlier, I talked with a helicopter pilot about the contracts he signed to work in the oil and gas sector. I explained about the SMS and its management guarantee based on the risk analysis and how it influences the strength of a service provider organization. He looked at me with disdain and sentenced “Well Sergio, contracts are awarded for who charges less and not for the SMS.” We can talk technically about the SMS and its prevention fineries, but if we think of all the pain and tears that arise after an aviation catastrophe, I declare myself a follower in all the concepts of Tony Tyler: “An accident is already too much.” Of course, because SMS does not exist.
