Risk management has traditionally focused on Value Protection – taking steps to ensure something undesirable doesn’t happen. Yet the disciplines of risk management are ideal for identifying the contributing factors and how they ought to be managed to optimize performance – Value Creation
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.
The challenge in changing the culture of an established organization, as Tom Howell comments in the LinkedIn group America’s Aviation Safety Management Solutions Forum, is possible but only with focus from the top. Quite often change at the top enables change management across the organization. When there are no management-change reason to trigger a change in culture to make focus on safety as the core, all too often the trigger is a major accident or event.
Change after an event is too late, as we know and reactive change can have seriously detrimental effects on the organization, the people and all stakeholders.
Somehow, – whether it is the company Board of Directors, peer pressure, associations or the enlightened hiring of strong, focused personnel into the safety role – something needs to trigger change to focus on predictive risk as a foundation for company survival. The economic interests of the company and its stakeholders are at risk unless the change is made in the management of the business based on professionalism and safety.
Sextant Readings Solutions – aviation professionals with focus on Compliance, Quality Management and Quality Assurance, Safety and Risk Management for the Aviation Industry, is an IS-BAO Support Services Affiliate and IS-BAO safety consultant and Auditor
It’s wrong to label safety a priority, according to Merlin Preuss, vice president of government and legislative affairs for the Canadian Business Aviation Association. “That’s because it’s much too easy to change priorities as the world evolves,” he told last month’s Business Aviation Safety Seminar in Montreal (BASS).
Sextant Readings Solutions – aviation professionals with focus on Compliance, Quality Management and Quality Assurance, Safety and Risk Management for the Aviation Industry, is an IS-BAO Support Services Affiliate and IS-BAO safety consultant and Auditor
Dr. Tony Kern is the CEO of Convergent Performance; a small, veteran owned “think tank” formed in 2004 and dedicated to reducing human error and improving performance in high risk environments such as aviation,military, healthcare and firefighting. Tony is one of the world’s leading authorities on human performance, has lectured on the subjects of applied human factors and performance improvement for nearly two decades, and is the author of seven books on the subject’
The Norcal Business Aviation Association (NCBAA) members were presented to a day of discussion about Professionalism in Aviation with topics like :
We highly recommend Dr. Tony Kern’s insights for all aviation professionals
Sextant Readings Solutions – aviation professionals with focus on Compliance, Quality Management and Quality Assurance, Safety and Risk Management for the Aviation Industry, is an IS-BAO Support Services Affiliate and IS-BAO safety consultant and Auditor
Reported May 2 2013, the FAA is expanding the safety data collection capabilities of The Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system with the move to open the program to Helicopter operators. With the proven success of ASIAS in reducing accident rates in commercial air space operations, we believe that the ASIAS capabilities will help helicopter operators achieve measurable safety improvements.
Source: Aviation International News » May 2013
by Mark Huber
The FAA is planning to expand a new safety data collection and analysis system beyond scheduled air carriers to all elements of the aviation community, including helicopters. The move comes as the helicopter industry formally acknowledged earlier this year that, while it has made considerable progress, it will likely fall short of the International Helicopter Safety Team’s (IHST) goal of reducing the helicopter accident rate by 80 percent by 2016. Industry efforts to date have resulted in a 30-percent reduction since 2005.
The Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) system collects information from a wide variety of sources, including flight data recorders. Initially, when the program began in 2007, thirteen airlines and the FAA joined the initiative. The FAA’s role is non-punitive. Today, membership has grown to 44 airlines representing 96 percent of commercial airspace operations and 131 safety data sources, according to the FAA. The Mitre Corp. analyzes and safeguards proprietary airline data; integrates it with Mitre’s own aviation safety databases covering weather, radar tracks, airspace and traffic and other public data; conducts studies; and builds analysis capabilities. Airline data is shared over Mitre secure servers and includes pilot safety reports and FDR data. Mitre began delivering safety studies generated by the program to the FAA and stakeholders in 2008. The studies had an immediate benefit, including the redesign of airspace in select regions to thwart false Taws alerts. ASIAS also establishes safety measurement benchmarks that allow individual operators to see where they stack up against the industry as a whole.
The data trove collected to date is huge. It includes 125,000 aviation safety action program reports, 10 million flight operations quality assurance (FOQA) reports, and 50,000 air traffic safety action program reports. Although the system is relatively new, to date, seven of the 76 safety enhancements proposed by the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (Cast) have been derived from ASIAS data. ASIAS also tracks the effectiveness of those enhancements as well as 51 distinct metrics. Twice annually, 500 airline aviation safety professionals share safety information at closed-door “Infoshare” meetings. Issues discussed are linked to ASIAS for early detection and analysis.
Helicopter Applications
ASIAS is scalable to the helicopter industry, particularly in areas where there is a high concentration of operations such as the Gulf of Mexico, according to several sources familiar with the program. Preliminary discussions have already begun with the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST), said Stan Rose, director of safety for the Helicopter Association International (HAI). Morphing ASIAS for helicopters would involve different metrics and data, but similar analysis tools could be used. “The reason the Gulf is attractive is that it is a big enough [data set] and accounts for approximately 25 percent of the helicopter flight hours in the U.S.,” Rose said.
To a certain degree, major operators in the Gulf are already sharing safety data and other information through the HeliShare program and its quarterly meetings, said Stuart Lau, chairman of the IHST’s helicopter flight data monitoring committee. Lau said that current plans are to integrate HeliShare members and their data fully into ASIAS by the third quarter and add major helicopter EMS providers into the group. “The FAA has funded the rotorcraft segment to be included in ASIAS, and we are currently working with operators on memoranda of understanding and other logistical details.” Lau said Gulf operators are a natural starting point because they have “the most mature flight data monitoring programs. It’s really the beginning stages of ASIAS for us and we are going to continue the quarterly HeliShare meetings. So far it has been successful and at every meeting more events are shared operator to operator. Once we get ASIAS involved we will have the opportunity for directed studies.”
NTSB member Robert Sumwalt told AIN he thinks the application of ASIAS to the helicopter industry will add to safety management initiatives and be a good way to prevent data siloing. “If you are just stove piping and not sharing information” accidents can result. “You need to collect, analyze and disseminate the information,” Sumwalt said, adding that “protocols need to be put in place to make sure that information is not being misused. The ASIAS protocols have been vetted. The air carrier industry has been doing this for a number of years. The ASIAS executive board decides the cases it wants to study and queries its members to check their databases. Nobody at the FAA or at Mitre can tap into member databases. It’s been really successful.”
“This is one of the next steps” the helicopter industry must make to further reduce its accident rate, Sumwalt said. “Until it does it is not going to make any appreciable improvement on the accident record until it is willing and able to go to this next step. The IHST effort has been fairly successful, but if they want to continue the uphill climb, they have to go to the next level, which is something like [ASIAS].”
Sumwalt said that for the helicopter industry to hit a plateau in the accident reduction rate is not unusual, based on the airlines’ experience with safety goals set by Cast, widely acknowledged as the model for the IHST, in the 1990s. “Even that model had to move the goal post a couple of times, but they still did a heck of a lot and they still did make a difference. Good safety is good business. ASIAS is a good model to share information in a non-threatening way.
Sextant Readings Solutions.
I attended the 2013 Business Aviation Safety Seminar (BASS) in Montreal last week (formerly CASS).
The session was well presented from a safety perspective but more importantly to my view was the level of commitment and adoption from an aviation sector that is not subject to the 14 CFR Part 5 rule that will affect Part 121 operators this year. The sector is demonstrating aviation safety management leadership in the adoption of SMS concepts, practices, and principles.
We heard many discussions regarding Quality Management, Quality Assurance, safety assurance, charter aviation safety, helicopter safety management, and compliance issues and solutions.
I highly recommend you attend next year
HOUSTON, March 26, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Bristow Group Inc. the leading provider of helicopter services to the offshore energy industry, announced today that The Department for Transport in the United Kingdom has awarded its UK affiliate Bristow Helicopters Limited (Bristow Helicopters) a new contract to provide civilian Search and Rescue (SAR) services for all of the UK. The SAR services contract has a phased-in transition period beginning in April 2015 and continuing to July 2017 and a contract length of approximately ten years.
Under the terms of this contract, Bristow Helicopters will provide 11 Sikorsky S-92 and 11 AgustaWestland AW189 helicopters that will be located at ten bases across the UK. Each SAR base will operate either two S-92s or two AW189s. In addition to the ten bases with 20 aircraft, there will be two fully SAR-equipped training aircraft that can be deployed to any base as needed.
William E. Chiles, President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are honored that our affiliate Bristow Helicopters was selected by The Department for Transport to provide this vital service for the people of the United Kingdom. This award will employ 22 of the world’s most technologically advanced and safest helicopters which will dramatically improve the capability to save lives and significantly reduce the UK Government’s costs for the next decade. It is planned that some of the military personnel currently involved in SAR in the UK will join Bristow Helicopters to work under this contract, and we look forward to welcoming them into the Bristow family.”
In early 2012, Bristow Helicopters was awarded a Gap SAR services contract that commences in July 2013, utilizing four, latest technology S-92 helicopters based in Scotland at Stornoway and Sumburgh. The Gap SAR contract is expected to run for about four years until transition occurs for these two bases to the new longer-term contract announced today.
Mike Imlach, Bristow Helicopters Managing Director, said, “Bristow Helicopters has a proven reputation for exceptional UK search and rescue services, having performed such services over 36 years with world-class operations that included unmatched flight safety performance, extensive aircrew training, first class maintenance facilities, supply-chain partners, and project procurement and contract management. Affiliates of Bristow Group Inc. currently operate similar search and rescue services in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Dutch Antilles, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and Trinidad.”
Under the terms of this new SAR contract, Bristow Helicopters currently anticipates earning approximately $2.5 billion in revenue. Jonathan Baliff, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, added, “We believe that these contract terms and conditions are transformative from an operational and financial standpoint for our company. The number of helicopters operated, combined with the revenue and earnings generated under this contract, will create both a larger and lower risk company going forward.”
“The total capital requirement for this project is expected to be approximately $1 billion, much of which is dedicated to the acquisition of 22 of the most technologically advanced, SAR-equipped S-92 and AW189 helicopters ever built. We believe that the financing plan based on our company’s capital strength was an important criterion for the selection of Bristow Helicopters to provide this life saving service which requires a high level of safety and on-time reliability, and at higher service levels and lower cost than previously anticipated by the UK government. We are confident that Bristow Helicopters will provide excellent rescue services to the people of the United Kingdom.”
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Statements contained in this news release that state Bristow’s or management’s intentions, expectations or predictions of the future – including its ability to complete and fund the above-referenced SAR services, the timing for beginning the SAR services, expected revenue generation and whether the SAR services will be beneficial to Bristow’s operations are forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statement as result of unanticipated circumstances including but not limited to termination of the contract by the Department or higher costs. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained from time to time in Bristow’s SEC filings, including but not limited to Bristow’s annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Bristow Group Inc. disclaims any intention or obligation to revise any forward-looking statements, including financial estimates, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
ABOUT BRISTOW GROUP INC. Bristow Group Inc. is the leading provider of helicopter services to the worldwide offshore energy industry based on the number of aircraft operated and one of two helicopter service providers to the offshore energy industry with global operations. The Company has major transportation operations in the North Sea, Nigeria and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and in most of the other major offshore oil and gas producing regions of the world, including Alaska, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia and Trinidad. For more information, visit the Company’s website at www.bristowgroup.com.
Contact: Linda McNeill
Bristow Group Inc.
(713) 267-7622
Bristow Group is has a long history of supporting Helicopter and rotor safety, compliance, safety assurance, quality management, and safety integration. As an active member of Helicopter Association International (HAI Safety) and promotes Helicopter Safety Management to the industry
The Heli-Expo 2013 Safety Challenge provided insights into all aspects of Safety Management from Safety Culture and leadership through Flight Operations and Maintenance to safety analysis and preventative actions.
Well received by al attendees, the Safety Challenge attendance reflects the growing interest in all things related to Safety.
As SMS consultants, auditors (IS-BAO) and solution providers, we extend our thanks to HAI for creating the Safety challenge and for its choice of speakers who imparted their knowledge.
As helicopter organizations begin to implement safety management programs, we support the industry with expertise, leading-edge solutions, mobile safety management access, and integration of FOQA and FRMS to support your safety culture. If we can help you, please call us at 415 689 4SMS or visit us at www.sextantreadings.com.
Proud members of HAI
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?