Safety Management Systems and the four pillars of aviation safety

¶ … Aviation Safety

Traditionally, airport safety took up a reactive model. It has since evolved to a proactive and predictive model, with a safety program whose purpose "is to detect hazards or threats and mitigate them before an accident occurs" (Lu, Schreckengast & Jia, 2011, p. 2). The introduction of Safety Management Systems (SMS) in 2002 was aimed at ensuring that airports could effectively deal with their safety issues through efficient activity and safety planning, as well as regulatory compliance. An SMS has four pillars;

Safety policy -- the formulation of a procedural framework outlining relationship roles, responsibilities, and management involvement in safety-management issues. If these are properly established, authority and accountability is deemed to flow efficiently, enabling an organization to encourage safety in all its actions and activities (Q-Pulse, 2012).

Safety risk management -- the effective and timely identification of hazards and their associated risks, as well as appropriate mitigation strategies through the plan, do, check, and act (PDCA) plan (Lu, Schreckengast & Jia, 2011).

iii) Safety assurance -- development of data driven controls, with unquestionably effective reporting systems authenticated by internal as well as external auditing experts, to validate performance and measure deviations between actual performance and safety targets (Q Pulse, 2012).