A Practical Guide to Safety Management Systems

This is a fifteen-part series on building a Safety Management System that survives contact with the operation. Read in order, it runs from working out what your people actually do through to a system that stays current on its own. Read out of order, each part stands alone. It is written from two decades of building, running and auditing these systems in Canadian aviation and general industry.

Who this is for

Owners and managers who have been told they need a Safety Management System and want to know what that actually involves. Safety practitioners who are tired of systems that satisfy an audit and change nothing. And anyone who suspects their procedures describe a job nobody recognises.

There is no theory here that is not tied to something you would do on a Monday morning.

Part one: foundations

Before a management system means anything, you have to know what your people actually do, what each task requires, and how competence gets proven. This is the groundwork everything else rests on.

• The Safety Paradox: Moving Beyond Concepts to Competence
  Safety is a result, not an action. Why you manage the conditions of work rather than the concept.
• Bridging the Gap: A Practical Guide to Competence and Compliance
  Four steps from a task inventory to a procedure people will actually follow.
• Beyond the Surface: Mastering the Granular Task Inventory
  Turning the work as imagined by management into the work as performed on the floor.
• Beyond the List: Optimizing for Safety and Success
  Hazards, resources, task-specific training, and competence validated by performance rather than attendance.
• The Anatomy of an SOP: A Guide to Writing Effective SOPs
  The ten components an effective SOP must contain, and why it needs a review cycle.

Part two: the management system and its policy pillar

Procedures go stale without a framework to keep them current. These four cover what a Safety Management System is, the policy that anchors it, whose interests shape it, and who is accountable for what.

• Moving to Long-Term Success: Integrating SMS into Operations
  The four pillars of a Safety Management System, and the three ways procedures erode without one.
• Implementing a Safety Policy — Pillar One of an SMS
  Policy as the decision that safety will shape how the business operates, not sit beside it.
• Who Are the Stakeholders in a Safety Management System?
  Five stakeholder groups, each influencing the system through a different driver.
• Defining Accountabilities in Safety Policy Implementation
  Who is accountable for what, from the boardroom to the front line.

Part three: culture and communication

A policy is words on paper until it meets human behaviour. These two deal with what actually determines whether the system gets used.

• Safety Culture or Organizational Culture?
  Why "how work is done when no one is looking" tells only half the story.
• The Power of Two-Way Communication in Safety
  Four pillars of communication that runs both ways, and three ways to make it stick.

Part four: risk management and hazard identification

The active engine of the system: finding where the operation is vulnerable, scoring that defensibly, and keeping the search for hazards running continuously rather than annually.

• Risk Management: Mapping the Operational Terrain
  Risks to the operation as well as to people, and why to report abnormalities rather than only accidents.
• The Illusion of Likelihood: Why Traditional Risk Assessments Fail (And How to Fix Them)
  Decoupling exposure frequency from control effectiveness, and the seven-question control audit that replaces guesswork.
• The Fresh Eyes Advantage: Why Your Newest Hires Should Lead Hazard Identification
  Expert blindness, and why your newest hires should be running the inspections.
• The Three-Tiered Engine of Hazard Identification
  Three levels of hazard identification, and why a clean audit does not mean you have no hazards.

Where to start

If reading fifteen articles in order is not realistic, start from the problem you have:

• You have been asked to put an SMS in place and do not know where to begin. Start with the four pillars, then the policy that anchors them. Moving to Long-Term Success: Integrating SMS into Operations. Implementing a Safety Policy — Pillar One of an SMS.
• Your procedures exist but nobody follows them. The problem is usually that they describe the job as imagined rather than as performed. Beyond the Surface: Mastering the Granular Task Inventory. Bridging the Gap: A Practical Guide to Competence and Compliance. The Anatomy of an SOP: A Guide to Writing Effective SOPs.
• Your risk assessments do not hold up to challenge. Likelihood is almost always the culprit. The Illusion of Likelihood: Why Traditional Risk Assessments Fail (And How to Fix Them).
• You have had an incident and want to understand what your system missed. Start with the levels of hazard identification, then accountabilities. The Three-Tiered Engine of Hazard Identification. Defining Accountabilities in Safety Policy Implementation.
• You want the whole argument in one sitting. Read the first one. The Safety Paradox: Moving Beyond Concepts to Competence.

Working with me

The series describes how I work. If you would rather not build it yourself, that is what the consulting side is for, whether that is developing the system, investigating an event, auditing what you already have, or writing procedures your people will use. Get in touch and we can work out what you actually need.