SAFETY MEETINGS

[challenger 604]

Hi all, I recently took on the position of Safety Officer for a relatively small Aviation Company with two Aeroplanes and about six pilots. I need ideas on hot to structure and conduct my first Safety Meeting. Just did my SMS course a few days ago. Thanks:ok:

[Saint Jack]

challenger 604, consider these:

1. Make attendance compulsory for all except those on essential duties. By everyone, I mean EVERYONE, from GM/MD down. This will be essential for the credability of the SMS.
2. Keep an attendance list.
3. Keep the agenda very flexible, let the meeting find its own direction - within reason.
4. Keep minutes of what was said but not necessarily who said it - some people prefer anonymity - give it to them, it's their feed-back you're after, not their name.
5. If you feel some are holding back consider having a hangar-floor level meeting. Have a junior person (Supervisor etc.) chair it and leave. It is human nature not to 'complain' (as some will see it) out of fear of jeapardizing their position. But thes persons are generally the ones who really know what is going on so you have to get them to open-up.
5. Act on as much feed-back as practical to let others see that their input is accepted and valued.

Good luck.

[Stratocaster]

Do you mean a meeting with management to solve existing/potential issues, or more like a safety briefing where you basically do the show and get feedback from crews afterwards? Or a mix of the two?

[GlueBall]

Study, review and discuss ALL accident/incident reports of airplanes that you operate.

[Saint Jack]

There are a couple of replies here that seem to suggest that their is still some confusion between what used to be known as a Flight Safety Programme and the relatively new requirement for a Safety Management System (which should include all of the elements of the Flight Safety Programme). The former was almost universally confined to the safe operation of aircraft with often minimal regard to the practices and procedures that resulted in a serviceable aircraft, i.e. maintenance and all related functions.

The requirement for an SMS is intended, in part, to overcome these deficiencies. A comprehensive SMS will include guidance material for ALL aspects of an operators organization - from office staff to pilots - no exceptions. Ideally, the SMS should govern safety-related behaviour from the moment a person arrives on the premises to the time they leave.

Regular safety meetings together with a robust internal audit programme plus a readily accessible feed-back process is one of the corner-stones of a successful SMS.

With regard to safety meetings, seriously consider having two levels of meetings, one for middle- and top-management and another for hangar-floor staff. This will address the tendancy for some junior personnel to withhold potentially valuable safety-related information on the misguided notion that they may jeapordize their job by being seen to 'complain' in front of senior management. As I've said earlier, these are generally the people who have to most to contribute - give them room to do it.

[Spitoon]

As with any meeting, it's important to know why you're having it. If nothing else, this will give you hints about who should be there and what you should be talking about.

In any management system there will need to be many meetings, some formal, others less so. Ideally the purpose of these meetings will be clearly set out in Terms of Reference and so on. You will need these even in your small organisation because they form the framework in which you - and everyone one else - will operate.

If ToR do not already exist for this meeting, and you are not sure of what your role as 'Safety Officer' is, I would suggest meeting with the boss to clarify things.

You might want to check if the boss expects you to set up an SMS (I'm guessing there isn't one in place at the moment from what you say in your first post). If this is the case you will need his/her support - irrespective of whether you are just seeking regulatory approval or trying to manage the organisation in a way that manages risks at all times.

In the absence of any pre-existing work, I would suggest your safety meeting brings together people who can identify hazards and potential outcomes in your specific operations and can realistically assess their likelihood of occurrence. Being aware of the risks and managing them is core to any safe operation (and to any SMS).

Remember, even though some people like to use lots of impressive words when talking about SMS, most of it is common sense to those of us working in aviation. Don't be put off by those who try to scare us or want to impress us - find out what your boss wants and then take it step-by-step. Even if you get saddled with developing an SMS for your organisation, you'll find that you're already doing lots of good stuff - no it probably just needs to be written down in a little more detail.

[frontlefthamster]

As a longer-term goal, you should plan to get rid of your safety meetings.

By separating safety from 'normal' day-to-day operations, decisions, inter-action, you allow it to be compartmentalised and disconnected from everyday activities. In the best companies, 'safety' (that mysterious, immeasurable, unhelpful, conceptual, befuddlement) is ingrained throughout the whole.

It's also helpful to be very clear about reactive measures and developmental measures. The former are about putting right what has gone wrong, the latter are all about prevention. Try to have some clear aims to move away from the one and towards the other.

Finally, the 'safety officer' can often become unpopular and disconnected from the core himself. He's the one who says 'stop' at inconvenient times, who wants to talk about bad stuff with people who want to keep going forward with the good stuff, who sits in a high-and-mighty place and seems to follow his own agenda, at odds with the ambition to make money which his contemporaries all share. Here's another benefit of moving away from a separate safety regime: you (as safety officer) can be part of the whole, as your safety systems will be.

Finally, remember that the most important thing in aviation is money, and always keep your powder as dry as you can, and you'll do well.

[challenger 604]

Many Thanks, everyone for the feedback. Highly appreciated. Anyone know any good websites to assist with an ERP simulation Drill?:ok:

[frontlefthamster]

challenger 604, you have a PM (Private Message) - you can log in and then click on 'your notifications' near the top right of the screen to see it (just mentioning this in case you're not familiar with the PM system here).