Practical Risk Management tools?
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Practical Risk Management tools?
Have any of you come across practically applicable risk management tools for airline operations?
Specifically I am trying to figure out a Risk Management process for a new route, and here I am realising that there are 2 main problems:
1 How to realistically assess the risks present?
2 How to figure out in the first place which risks need to be assessed.
The idea is to come up with a process that is repeatable and objective but I find that there it all depends highly on the personal viewpoint of the person doing the assessment.
Does anyone have any fresh ideas or come across an interesting approach to the process?
Specifically I am trying to figure out a Risk Management process for a new route, and here I am realising that there are 2 main problems:
1 How to realistically assess the risks present?
2 How to figure out in the first place which risks need to be assessed.
The idea is to come up with a process that is repeatable and objective but I find that there it all depends highly on the personal viewpoint of the person doing the assessment.
Does anyone have any fresh ideas or come across an interesting approach to the process?
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Practical risk management tools
Can't say I've seen airline specific examples of this sort of thing, but there are risk management standards used around the world that are typically cited when presenting risk analyses. AS/NZ 4360 is the one I am most familiar with having worked and studied in the risk space for a while. That said, in my experience its use tends towards establishing some sort of credibility as opposed to being a truly practical tool. It is essentially a genericised process whereas risk management is rarely something that can be made generic or completely objective. Thus I find that people tend to lean on the standard too much without allowing their professional experience to count for much.
Perhaps you can see where I am going with this. In doing a risk analysis such as this you need to have a clear understanding of why you are doing this and who it is for. An obvious statement, but the concept gets lost often enough. The method and the content of the risk analysis really needs to incorporate all of the experience and knowledge that the organisation has, rather than trying to get people to sit around a table and come up with risk scores that at the end of the day are still highly subjective (such a process usually makes people frustrated and they end up feeling that this whole risk management thing is a big fat waste of time). To do this you need to be out there talking to the different parties and building you're own picture and then relying on the impressions you get to write something intelligent and useful. Easier said than done perhaps but in doing so you are also building an awareness of risk management throughout the organisation which hopefully will mean more people will come on board as they see what you are trying to do.
The beauty of a problem such as this one is that this is a repeatable process. Presumably this is not the first route the airline has considered so the lessons of establishing previous routes will help break down the different subject areas into manageable chunks. For example ground handling, air traffic services, etc'. Of course you also have to tie all the pieces together given that a huge challenge of any airline operation is ensuring the timing of operations doesn't result in too many unmanageable peaks and inefficient troughs.
Of course data is also essential. Once again I imagine you have data relating to delays in the current operation, unserviceability statistics and so on that will lend at least some level of objectivity to the risk analysis.
Hm. Now that I've written this much I'm interested to learn more about what you are trying to do!! A company with whom I have no affiliation with whatsoever but I believe they are pretty good in this area is Aerosafe (aerosafe.com.au). I'm pretty sure they operate all over the world in aviation risk management.
Hope that helps.
Perhaps you can see where I am going with this. In doing a risk analysis such as this you need to have a clear understanding of why you are doing this and who it is for. An obvious statement, but the concept gets lost often enough. The method and the content of the risk analysis really needs to incorporate all of the experience and knowledge that the organisation has, rather than trying to get people to sit around a table and come up with risk scores that at the end of the day are still highly subjective (such a process usually makes people frustrated and they end up feeling that this whole risk management thing is a big fat waste of time). To do this you need to be out there talking to the different parties and building you're own picture and then relying on the impressions you get to write something intelligent and useful. Easier said than done perhaps but in doing so you are also building an awareness of risk management throughout the organisation which hopefully will mean more people will come on board as they see what you are trying to do.
The beauty of a problem such as this one is that this is a repeatable process. Presumably this is not the first route the airline has considered so the lessons of establishing previous routes will help break down the different subject areas into manageable chunks. For example ground handling, air traffic services, etc'. Of course you also have to tie all the pieces together given that a huge challenge of any airline operation is ensuring the timing of operations doesn't result in too many unmanageable peaks and inefficient troughs.
Of course data is also essential. Once again I imagine you have data relating to delays in the current operation, unserviceability statistics and so on that will lend at least some level of objectivity to the risk analysis.
Hm. Now that I've written this much I'm interested to learn more about what you are trying to do!! A company with whom I have no affiliation with whatsoever but I believe they are pretty good in this area is Aerosafe (aerosafe.com.au). I'm pretty sure they operate all over the world in aviation risk management.
Hope that helps.
Try the CFIT Checklist as an example; IIRC there is a runway incursion version somewhere (Eurocontrol?). The format may provide some ideas.
Also, there is a similar concept for assessing procedural violations based on work by J Reason, P Hudson, et al – ‘The Violation Manual’; its basically a question / scoring sheet, but again this might provide some inspiration.
For browsing:
Also, there is a similar concept for assessing procedural violations based on work by J Reason, P Hudson, et al – ‘The Violation Manual’; its basically a question / scoring sheet, but again this might provide some inspiration.
For browsing:
- Information for Operators (InFO) Search for InFO 07015 Flight Risk Assessment Tool
- Risk management: Frequently asked questions
- http://www.ogp.org.uk/pubs/390.pdf
- Doc 9859
Last edited by alf5071h; 8th Apr 2009 at 01:51.
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Many thanks for the replies!
Some good links there!
Maybe some more details are in order:
I am a flight safety officer for an airline which does ACMI leases for other airlines (scheduled) and so we have regularly new destinations, say 3-4 a year. I m pretty familiar with the process description of risk management, but I am trying to come up with a practical application, the nuts and bolts of it if you will...
SMS has been implemented a while now and we are pretty happy on the hazard identification side, communication to staff and management is ok as well, but we are trying to get to the next level, identifying and solving issues before they occur.
In theory risk management is supposed to accomplish this, however it is irritating to see that everyone is talking about risk management in SMS for airlines as if it is already solved.
In my opinion, the few methods we have are in childs shoes and nowhere near enough to have a proper systematic pro-active identification.
I have been involved with the ARMS working group (SKYbrary - ARMS Methodology for Risk Assessment ) and we are starting to get to a point where we have a more realistic method to do risk assessment of safety issues.
However trying to come up with a process for new routes I realise that the main problem is to identify what issues you need to risk assess to cover most of the risk. There is a practical time limit on how many assessments you can do.
By definition a new destination is an unknown, so your own company would not have identified any safety issues from own ops, this implies in turn that you do not know where to look and need to consider a sufficiently broad spectrum of issues to identify the ones that matter. (of course some external databases like ASRS and AAIB databases might help somewhat)
The CFIT checklist is a good tool but its scope is a bit different from what I need, the CFIT Checklist is a tool that is narrow but digs deep.
The tool I am trying to build is something that looks very broad (because you have to) and dig pretty shallow. The idea is that once it identifies a serious risk it needs to be analysed more in detail anyway through other means.
I do agree with the statement that the method is not that important, as long as it gets your organisation to talk and consider about the risks involved in their operation.
But the idea is that this method at least identifies those issues that are tended to be overlooked in the first place with more informal methods.
The tool does not have to be very sophisticated, but at least put up a flag at issues you need to have a closer look at before you accept them.
Also it aims to take a bit of the randomness out of the assessments, you can't avoid that there are different persons doing these assessments, so at least they should have the same frame of reference which forces them to consider relevant issues they might not think of by themselves.
Maybe some more details are in order:
I am a flight safety officer for an airline which does ACMI leases for other airlines (scheduled) and so we have regularly new destinations, say 3-4 a year. I m pretty familiar with the process description of risk management, but I am trying to come up with a practical application, the nuts and bolts of it if you will...
SMS has been implemented a while now and we are pretty happy on the hazard identification side, communication to staff and management is ok as well, but we are trying to get to the next level, identifying and solving issues before they occur.
In theory risk management is supposed to accomplish this, however it is irritating to see that everyone is talking about risk management in SMS for airlines as if it is already solved.
In my opinion, the few methods we have are in childs shoes and nowhere near enough to have a proper systematic pro-active identification.
I have been involved with the ARMS working group (SKYbrary - ARMS Methodology for Risk Assessment ) and we are starting to get to a point where we have a more realistic method to do risk assessment of safety issues.
However trying to come up with a process for new routes I realise that the main problem is to identify what issues you need to risk assess to cover most of the risk. There is a practical time limit on how many assessments you can do.
By definition a new destination is an unknown, so your own company would not have identified any safety issues from own ops, this implies in turn that you do not know where to look and need to consider a sufficiently broad spectrum of issues to identify the ones that matter. (of course some external databases like ASRS and AAIB databases might help somewhat)
The CFIT checklist is a good tool but its scope is a bit different from what I need, the CFIT Checklist is a tool that is narrow but digs deep.
The tool I am trying to build is something that looks very broad (because you have to) and dig pretty shallow. The idea is that once it identifies a serious risk it needs to be analysed more in detail anyway through other means.
I do agree with the statement that the method is not that important, as long as it gets your organisation to talk and consider about the risks involved in their operation.
But the idea is that this method at least identifies those issues that are tended to be overlooked in the first place with more informal methods.
The tool does not have to be very sophisticated, but at least put up a flag at issues you need to have a closer look at before you accept them.
Also it aims to take a bit of the randomness out of the assessments, you can't avoid that there are different persons doing these assessments, so at least they should have the same frame of reference which forces them to consider relevant issues they might not think of by themselves.
