Category Archives: Aviation Safety and Quality Management

Stand Up to Scrutiny

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Sextant Readings Solutions -Risk Stand Up to Scrutiny

Stand Up To Scrutiny

An effective SMS Information Management solution provides the ability to always be in a state of readiness and to provide confidence to regulators, customers and third parties that you are in control of your management system.

The SMS Information Management solution makes it easier to adopt risk management in all disciplines across the organization. It provides a consistent mechanism to manage risk effectively and efficiently

Risk management is an on-going process and there will always be actions to complete or improvements to be made.

Management Oversight

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Sextant Readings Solutions - Risk Management Oversight

Management Oversight

While executives have ultimate responsibility for risk and safety, it is not always practical for them to know or be aware of all the detail. They typically rely on appointed staff to provide them with reports to satisfy themselves that risk and safety is managed effectively.

An effective SMS Information management solution provides key insight into the risk management system to provide executives with status reports, outstanding actions, alerts and gap analysis.

A dashboard facility is available to bring focus to what needs closer scrutiny. The dashboard is flexible, allowing each individual user to determine the information that is of relevance to them.

Action management highlights actions pending and those overdue. Workflow management provides the ability to route information across the business as appropriate. Escalation management is provided to alert where the management system is not been responded to.

A comprehensive range of standard reports is further complemented with an intuitive report designer, enabling users to create and add to the library reports they find of interest.

All management systems generate reviews of systems, processes, people and risk assessments. These are managed with all relevant staff made aware of their responsibilities.

Intelligence from other sources of information within the business, can be made available in in an effective SMS Information Management solution to get closer to real time risk assessment, test assumptions and further strengthen the management system. An effective SMS Information Management solution must be a very open system, and is designed to share information with other sources of intelligence within an organization.

Change Management

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Sextant Readings Solutions - Change Management

Change Management

It is perfectly feasible to have the same control or barrier deployed to manage several risks. It may be that, in some situations, one control is declared effective in managing one risk but only partially effective in managing another and that is when there is a need for care to be taken.

Where the control is only partially effective, there may be a temptation to adjust or modify it to strengthen it in relation to a particular risk – but in doing so you are unaware of its deployment elsewhere.

To avoid introducing change that fixes one thing but weakens another, an effective SMS Information Management solution provides the ability through control-centric views to determine where else a control is deployed. This provides insight and awareness of what else needs to be considered ahead of any proposed change.

Incident Management

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Incident Management

All risk assessments are based on information available and considered at a particular point in time. As more information becomes available it provides us with the capability to test some of the assumptions made in terms of threats, risks, consequences, barriers and controls.

At the heart of all SMS Information Management solutions is a need to record and learn from incidents and near misses. This allows an investigation of facts and provides the opportunity to take positive actions to lessen future risks.

The SMIS provides the ability to overlay all events, near misses and incidents on the BowTie of the relevant risk, and so provide a visualization of how the risk is being managed and controlled in practice.

An effective SMIS provides the ability to manage incidents and it shares information to provide insight into how robust the management system is. The intelligence that provides this input can be taken from other information sources within the organization.

Risk Lifecycle

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Sextant Readings Solutions - Risk Life Cycle

Risk Lifecycle

Risks need to be identified, assessed, treated and managed to a point where the organization is comfortable with their risk exposure. This process needs to be robust to ensure all risks are systematically evaluated, assessed and managed effectively.

The Risk Identification process (HAZID) highlights the risks that need to be addressed. Risks are normally logically grouped and those groups are known and managed as Registers.

The inherent risk (the raw risk with no controls or barriers in place) is assessed and quantified (rated based on pre-defined criteria) before being reviewed against a risk matrix.

The placement of the quantified risk on the matrix will determine if the risk is acceptable, needs treated or is unacceptable. If risks are deemed unacceptable, senior executives need to be informed and a value judgment must be made as to whether operations can continue.

Quantification can be from a single perspective or multi-perspective (looking at the risk from a number of viewpoints – environment, people, reputation, profit, etc.)

Risks in need of treatment generate actions to identify and put in place adequate controls and barriers. Those actions are distributed and managed until conclusion.

Once controls or barriers have been put in place the risk is once again quantified to determine if further work is required.

The effectiveness of each control or barrier can be assessed, highlighting the need for additional controls where their effectiveness in isolation is deemed partial or ineffective.

A risk can be considered acceptable but the organization may choose to take additional actions to lower the risk further. This is managed as a target quantification.

The Risk Lifecycle is managed in a way that is simply not possible with spreadsheets.

Sextant Readings Solutions - Control visualization

Gap Analysis

Managing risk with spreadsheets lets you manage what you have in place.

Sextant Readings Solutions - Risk Gap Analysis

However, managing risk provides the same benefits, but also lets you manage what you don’t have in place. And it’s what you don’t have in place that often hurts an organization.

Sextant Readings Solutions - Visualization shows gaps

The visual representation of risks quickly highlights where there is exposure, where there are missing controls and where situations are not being managed effectively.

A risk management solution provides insight into gaps in the risk management system, and aims to alert the appropriate people to accept the situation or do something about it. The solution also provides alerts of risks, controls and actions not being owned or managed to enable appropriate action to address and rectify.

Sextant Readings Solutions - Risk Alerts

Spreadsheets provide no insight as to what is not in place and fail to make intelligent use of the data they contain.

Widespread Understanding

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Sextant Readings Solutions - BowTie header

Widespread Understanding

Risk can be a complex subject. The terminology used can create confusion in that – in normal conversation – a hazard, risk and a threat can have similar meanings. However, in terms of risk management, each of those labels has their own distinct meaning.

The first challenge for any organization is in ensuring that the terminology used is widely understood and consistently applied.

Our research has found that those not directly involved in risk management find the BowTie methodology really helpful. The diagram helps in the understanding of how risks are managed in general and, more importantly, in conveying individual risks and how it applies to them.

 

Sextant Readings Solutions - BowTie image

  1. The Risk is identified in the middle.
  2. The left side of the diagram identifies what could cause a particular Risk to happen (Threats) and highlights the barriers and controls in place to Prevent the risk from happening

For this reason the left hand side is referred to as Prevention

  1. The right side of the diagram identifies what could be the outcomes (Consequences) should the Risk actually happen and highlights controls and barriers in place to try and minimize the severity of those consequences.

For this reason the right hand side is referred to as Recovery.

This diagram is far more capable of conveying risk, and achieving a deeper understanding of those risks and how they are to be managed, than a line item on a spreadsheet.

Sextant Readings Solutions - Risk Gap Analysis

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The BowTie representation highlights the relationship, interaction and dependencies between Hazards, Threats, Risks and Consequences. It highlights why barriers and controls have to be maintained and respected in order to prevent undesirable events from occurring or to minimize the consequences should one occur. .

Trends on Rotorcraft Safety in the current FAA Safety Briefing provides good insight

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  • Lee Roskop, an operations research analyst in the FAA Rotorcraft Directorate, has written an excellent article in the current March/April) of the FAA Safety Briefing.

He says “The trend in U.S. rotorcraft accidents in 2012 reinforced the message that the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), the government, and the rotorcraft industry groups have communicated for years; that is, too many helicopter accidents occur in three industry sectors: personal/private, instructional/ training, and aerial application.”

He also comments that “The data and analysis from 2012 paint a clear picture of the problem.”

The accident trend continues even though IHST, the FAA, other government groups, and the rotorcraft industry have reinforced the message that pilots and operators need to take steps to ensure safer flights.

See the article at What’s Trending in Rotorcraft Safety?

Aviation Safety, Quality and Risk Management, ISO, OSHA, TSA, EPA, FAA, IS-BAO, IOSA, EASA

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Services for the Aviation Industry

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Our aviation consulting services are supported by a network of partners sharing resources and values. We believe in applying the right set of skills and experience to any aviation project, and to deliver right-priced solutions. Our aviation clients benefit by achieving their goals in an efficient and cost effective manner.

We consult across a wide variety of clients in the global aviation world on determining the safety and operational integrity of our client’s airline, repair station and airport operations. Our services range from airline safety and operations assessments including flight department assessments, fuel farm and ground services support training, airport security assessments, and technical manual development.

Our philosophy is to assist our clients to build closed-loop systems to support all aspects of Flight Operations, Ground Operations, Aircraft Maintenance, Security and Safety. We focus on leadership, communication, problem resolution, continuous surveillance and information architecture to meet an organization’s responsibilities for its safe aviation operations.