Spitoon said:
Quote:
And yet the UK AAIB barely mentions it.
and I wonder if he needs to re-read the report; I thought it made it quite clear that the 'risk assessment' carried out failed to identify the hazards to aircraft operation. These processes can be very helpful, but only work if appropriate groups of competent individuals are given the time required to work through the problem.
frontlefthamster, I have re-read the report. You are quite right that it states that the risk assessment failed to identify hazards to aircraft operation. It also mentions a Safety Case produced by the airport. In fact, it devotes about a page and a half to the topics - this out of over 60 pages of facts, analysis and conclusion.
Safety Management Systems are 'marketed', by some anyway, as the generic way to assure that things will be safe, irrespective of the technologies used or the environment. ICAO has gone for this in a big way, perhaps because keeping the SARPs 'up-to-date' and relevant to modern operations was becoming increasingly difficult. So in this context the SMS is the lynchpin for all other safety activities. And at Bristol it seems to have failed. This still seems to me to have more significance than is reflected in the AAIB report.
I also believe that it is wholly misleading to equate 'doing a risk assessment', flawed or otherwise, or producing a Safety Case to operating a SMS. An effective SMS is not easily described - it is a way of working, a set of procedures that are clear, do what they are intended to do and are used, both pro-active and reactive to event, a culture that pervades the organisation. The way in which the organisation appears to have permitted information that all things may not be well to be ignored - OK, perhaps that's unfair, shall we say over-ridden by commercial imperatives - is a good example of an ineffective SMS.
Just in case it is not apparent, I am a believer in this SMS thing - I always have been - because I think it works. It makes things safer. And it's not difficult to do. Most of it is little more that common sense and professionalism. Sadly, where SMSs appear to fail it seems almost always to be failings not of the concept but of the implementation, and usually from the top.
OK, I guess that's the rant over.