Remote Management of a Safety Management System

Remote Management of a Safety Management System

Another insightful Post from Helena1320

A Safety Management System (SMS) may be managed from a remote location, by a Strategy Process Solutions (SPS). There are two components to a Remote Management System. One is the SMS, which is an onsite process verification how the job is done, while SPS is the strategy of planning and implementing design processes that conform to regulatory compliance and organizational objectives and goals. 

It is of vital importance to manage processes, both for regulatory compliance and safe operation, as a tool to evaluate how effective job-performance descriptions are.  During prior years without SMS the confidence level of how well processes were functioning was in all cases zero. There was no method, or tools available to assess how well the systems worked. There were no data collected to measure the confidence level of any processes, or give guidance of potential malfunctioning processes. It was assumed that it worked well as long as there were no accidents. However, after every major accident a lesson-learned statement was issued to explain the lack of known process effectiveness.

At an airport, runway inspections are conducted regularly throughout the day, depending on size and complexity of the airport. Managing these inspections are operational management and must be an onsite activity. Management of the processes itself is data collection and can be administered from a remote site. The processes include established timelines, a check list, runway items to be check and 

other critical safety conditions. This process would require all areas to be checked and reported as acceptable or non-acceptable, or with variances in between. Since there is a set timeline, or a goal for process to be executed, there is an open loop to be closed with the submission of report within a few minutes after inspection is done. At the conclusion of submitting the report, there is data available to process for management for effectiveness of the Strategic Process System. Other options for runway inspection processes could be the use of drones, flying the approach checking for obstacles and flying the runway checking for Foreign Object Debris (FOD), or in the form of satellite sweeps of approach and runway.

Data and results of these inspections are irrelevant to the confidence level of how effective the 

process for management for effectiveness of the Strategic Process System. Other options for runway inspection processes could be the use of drones, flying the approach checking for obstacles and flying the runway checking for Foreign Object Debris (FOD), or in the form of satellite sweeps of approach and runway.

Data and results of these inspections are irrelevant to the confidence level of how effective the inspection processes

themselves are. If the goal is that a runway and approach is swept for obstacle and FOD status prior to every flight and the process is actually conducted prior to each flight, then the process is functioning within the expected confidence level. The processes of management of obstacles or FOD is an operational SMS process. Operational status of runways is an onsite management process, where data is collected establish the effectiveness of processes for safe flight operations. Data from onsite processes are applied to operational aviation Safety Management System of the runways.

Remote Management of a Safety Management System requires a remote Strategic Process System, combined with onsite aviation Safety Management System.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                     

Helena1320