Excellent question K! One that was briefly touched on here:
Using parts of an SMS without tailoring them to your
own organisation or circumstances is contrary to the
central idea of SMS. Such a box-ticking exercise would
be both dangerous (thinking you are being safe when
you are not) and a waste of time, he says.
Box-ticking is in many ways the opposite of safety
culture. Just as with 'culture', there is no exact definition
of 'safety culture', but a 2006 ICAO document makes
a good stab when it refers to a good safety culture as
a corporate safety culture that fosters safe practices,
encourages safety communications and actively
manages safety with the same attention to results as
financial management.
Link:
http://www.pprune.org/dg-p-general-a...usiness-2.html
The article in the Flight Safety mag was actually quite good...surprise, surprise!
Like all good ideas there is always a minority that see a way to exploit or abuse a system/law/rules to their own gain. In the case of SMS I have seen both the good and the bad. I feel that a SMS is only as good as the 'culture' within a company.
If an operator is honest, upfront and embraces their employees as their key assets to the business, then the foundations of a good SMS are layed. A good manager will use the SMS to promote the business and actively seek input and ideas to improve the SMS.
Unfortunately a bad operator will only see the SMS as a means of showing compliance to the regulator i.e. "we've got this in place so we must be compliant"!
This says it all I think (from above):
Such a box-ticking exercise would be both dangerous (thinking you are being safe when you are not) and a waste of time, he says.
Box-ticking is in many ways the opposite of safety
culture.
Cheers