SMS or safety management systems are an integral part of the airworthiness management function; we need to evaluate our known risk’s and ensure that we mitigate them and manage them to an acceptable level.
There will always be occurrences and the important factor is to capture them and then risk assess each occurrence or near miss. The more reports the safety management system gets then then more we can prepare for the risk that we face.
There are also controlling measures that we can put in place to reduce risk in many cases – the controlling measure is designed that it can allow a risk to exist, but we lower the value of the assessed risk to an acceptable or preferable level.
The control measures are commonly referred to in a hierarchy of is a list of the most preferable through to the least with regards to risk. If course to eliminate risk is the aim, but in reality, this is commonly not possible for many reasons including commercial factors
Think about some of the following examples for a risk we encounter and consider if we can apply
any of these examples to the risk:
1. Elimination – This is removal of the hazard from the environment.
2. Substitution – Change the method of operation, activity, or scenario to one where risk is removedor lowered.
3. Isolation – Can we move the activity, scenarios, or circumstance(s) to isolate the risk.
4. Verification – Do we and can we ensure that the process or procedure works and is followed.
This is only a few of the points and there are different lists available also; risk and safety management work hand in hand are integral to aviation.
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