krujje:
I don't believe that the concept of everyone being responsible for safety is complete nonsense, nor do I see how it would necessarily be a conflict of priorities.
Sorry, not communicating very well - my fault. "Everyone responsible for safety" doesn't exclude specialists of course, the assumption being that within the culture where everyone contributes and has a responsibility to make sure oneself and others don't "run with knives". I know you're aware but for the sake of discussion, many, including "the top", assume that safety is not doing unsafe acts, period. If we just don't do things that are unsafe, we'll be okay. We know this is isn't what a safety culture is however, not, at least, a full and operating one.
None of us wish an accident ergo we will act safely; - it is upon that foundation that such 'first-level" thinking is based and so far as it goes, it works and "the streets will be clean", to extend your metaphor a bit.
However, again to extend the metaphor, the streets ought not to be trash-ridden in the first place because we all (should) have an ecological awareness which prevents us from trashing our nest.
In fact, carry it further, and there should be no "trash" to dispose of in the first place, (I really don't want to take this thread too far away - but ever taken all the packaging off the groceries you've just come home from and returned it all to the grocery store? Quite a reaction...).
Now we know that this is ideal and likely unachievable but we all agree it's a worthwhile goal.
Safety specialists and targeted safety programs such as ASRS, LOSA, FDA/FOQA, AQP and so on present an "ecology of mind" (a culture with an ethic, if you will) within the safety arena in much the same way that the extended metaphor would have non-polluted streets, (etc etc).
I realize this is simplistic and there are all manner of rabbit trails and yeah-but's that could be pursued, (some more worthwhile than others) but I would like to convey that I believe that while safety is "everyone's business", such is not exclusive of the need for specialists. The mistake in SMS design is, in my view, that it lets the regulator off the hook except for an audit/oversight role, (substantially less involvement, ostensibly due to the need to lower costs), an initially naive view of what safety is all about by operations managers who are not accustomed to stopping an operation in the same way that the guys in the cockpit might and are instead mission-oriented, and an airline where costs drive all decisions and then, where overt and imperative, safety considerations, if not too expensive, are taken into account.
The above is not intended to be a controversial statement to elicit response - this is a complex topic and not all can be said that needs saying in one sentence - I fully realize that such a black-and-white statement is not exactly how it works. Airlines have enormous interests in preventing an accident and by design, their daily operations reflect this deep concern in a thousand ways which are transparent to the user because they are "the culture". We are discussing safety within a period of metamorphosis - from traditional approaches like kicking tin, into "SMS-like" approaches which encourage the collection and examination of flight data and incident reports so that prevention, not investigation, becomes the goal.
What I meant by my foreshortened statement was, where safety is "everybody's business" and the airline assumes that such work as necessary to "make things safe" is being done, it becomes extremely difficult to implement complex and expensive safety programs because the justifications are, as is the case with safety, very difficult to specify in an economic model that requires specific definitions of the problem, targets, goals and a business case to defend the budget. "Everybody" can't just do that so it falls to a now-dwindling group of safety specialists to lobby for, create and implement programs like FDA. If management isn't onside and the CEO has no idea what "FDA" (or some other such pnemonic) means, then such programs are almost impossible to implement let alone actually use in daily operations.
I do not believe that SMS, as presently constituted and being enacted in Canada, will do this and instead will render the safety environment less, not more effective. Critical safety data such as DFDR and QAR (FDA) data is not protected in law in Canada (in the same way the CVR is) so while SMS requires the collection of information, it may, (not necessarily will) be "available" to the courts via the "public interest" route. That is not an SMS culture that adheres to "what" not "who" - we have already had a case where data has been used in a criminal case in Winnipeg. Also, the CVR of an accident aircraft was listened to by the families of victims. There are those who are today pursuing via the OSH process, flight data for their own narrow, industrial (not safety) purposes.
I hope I am wrong but it is far too early to tell.