ALEA Safety First Program Newsletters
February 2008
Keith Johnson
Safety Program Manager
I am pleased to announce
that at this year’s Annual Conference in
Houston there will be two new enhancements
to safety training programs. First, there
will be a 3-day pre-conference course on
Safety Management Systems (SMS). This is the
hot topic in the helicopter aviation
community. This is a must for safety
officers, unit managers, and those who want
to enhance their knowledge on the latest in
safety systems and risk management. This
course will be held July 14-16. Mark your
calendar now.
Unit Managers - The first
20 people to register for this year’s
Aviation Unit Managers’ Course will have
their tuition for the course and conference
registration waived. This is offered on a
first-come, first-served basis for ALEA
members who have been newly assigned as unit
managers/supervisors and/or have never
attended this course as a unit
manager/supervisor. There will be only one
“scholarship” per unit. You will receive the
latest information on law enforcement
aviation management including safety
management systems, flight operations,
aviation personnel mishap management and
corrective action methodology, personnel
selection and training, maintenance
management systems, and much more.
There will be an all-day
track on Safety Management Systems. This
will include an overview of SMS including,
how to implement a “Just Culture” in your
organization. What do you do when people
make honest mistakes or intentionally
violate organization standards? This can be
difficult if you don’t know. This 1-hour
class will eliminate the guesswork. Learn
how to handle any situation. The SMS track
will also include a 4-hour session on how to
use a computer software system that will
enable attendees to demonstrate the “return
on investment” when implementing SMS and
other aviation services. Attendees
completing this class will be authorized to
use the ROI software to help leverage the
benefits of implementing specific safety and
other strategies in their organizations. You
don’t want to miss this. Dr. David Eherts,
Ph.D., Sikorsky Aircraft Vice President of
Environment, Health and Chief Safety Officer
will be the presenter. Attendees are in for
a real treat. This session will enable you
to demonstrate how using a proven software
system actually saves your organization
money. The best news is that the software is
FREE, but you must attend the training
session.
Last month’s newsletter
addressed the Joint Helicopter Safety
Analysis Team’s (JHSAT) recommendations
pertaining to flight training. This article
pertains to Safety Management System
recommendations.
The JHSAT identified the
need for formalized programs to manage
safety through the creation of a positive
culture that increases employee safety
awareness and acceptance of safety
responsibility, and through routine
assessment and management of flight
operational risks. Safety Management Systems
provide a comprehensive solution. The
creation, training and management of
standards for flight operations,
particularly for potentially high-risk
missions, are another means of managing
safety. The overall purpose of an SMS is to
collect and use safety information to
identify hazards and reduce risk. Risk might
be reduced by designing the hazards out,
establishing barriers, providing warnings
through advisories or safety education,
making procedural changes as needed and/or
by addressing the hazards through training.
It is important that pilots and crewmembers
are not faced with mission risk without
standards, training and preflight
evaluations to help them manage risks. The
following safety recommendations were based
on similar accident circumstances that
suggested the lack of a structured safety
management program; the culture and
structure of existing operator safety
programs was typically not documented in the
accident investigation reports.
Develop a
systematic approach:
-
Promote a
culture of safety and regulatory
compliance, risk assessment and
management.
-
Develop and
use a formalized systems safety
approach (i.e. SMS) to risk
assessment and management to
improve personnel and
organizational decision-making.
-
Without
consideration for size of the
organization, complexity and
variety of aircraft used, or
level of risk associated with
missions; create a “right-sized”
SMS to manage safety in your
organization. The SMS needed to
manage risk in a small
organization will be less than
that which will be required for
a larger, more complex
operation.
-
Make a
proactive use of safety
information to create awareness
of known hazards and reduce the
risk of accidents.
Formalized
approaches for assessing and
managing risk in different
operational missions, maneuvers and
environments must be developed and
implemented:
-
Provide
comprehensive training for
assessing risks associated with
specific missions. The training
should demonstrate that the
safety culture of the
organization allows and
encourages aborting or canceling
the flight when risk factors
don’t justify conducting or
continuing the mission.
Supervisors and managers need to
actively participate in this
process.
-
Identify the
risks associated with the
mission, specific in-flight
maneuvers, and flying in close
proximity to the ground or
obstacles. This includes most
law enforcement missions. The
evaluation of risk should
consider the difficulty of the
mission, the environment in
which it will be performed, the
skills and experience of the
pilot and other crewmembers, and
the capabilities of the aircraft
and mission equipment. Keep in
mind: most law enforcement
operations are conducted close
to the performance capability of
the aircraft being flown.
For more
information on implementing an SMS,
refer to the ALEA SMS Toolkit in the
Safety First section of the ALEA
website at
www.alea.org,
click on Safety First at the bottom of the
homepage and go to SMS Toolkit.
Feel free to forward your
comments or questions to me at:
safety@alea.org. Remember, SAFETY FIRST.
Keith
KEITH JOHNSON
ALEA Safety Program Manager
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