S AFETY O RGANIZ ATION 3
3.5 A Control Framework Linking the Four SMS Pillars
SAFETY ORGANIZATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT 7 7
3.4.4 Safety Promotion
Safety promotion includes training and education, safety competen-cies, and safety communication. Safety training may be provided to practitioners at all levels in the organization. For instance, for senior managers, safety training may include compliance with national safety requirements, allocation of resources, and effective communi-cation across departments as well as active promotion of the SMS.
Safety training for managers and supervisors should address safety promotion and encouragement of operational practitioners in hazard reporting. In addition, training should include a thorough knowl-edge of safety processes, hazard identification, and risk assessment techniques. Emphasis should also be given to training for managing changes in technology, workplace, and operating resources. Finally, training for operational practitioners should address safety procedures and introduction to SMS fundamentals.
Safety communication refers to the delivery of safety instructions to the operating lines and the setting of feedback channels. Organizations should communicate the SMS policies and procedures to all practitio-ners as well as receive feedback about early warnings. The SMS should be visible in all aspects of the organization’s policy so that supervisors are accountable for their job roles and practitioners are clear about the job objectives and their degree of autonomy. In a way, safety promo-tion fills in the blank spaces in the organizapromo-tion’s policies, procedures, and processes, hence providing a sense of purpose for safety initiatives.
78 COGNITIVE ENGINEERING AND SAFETY ORGANIZATION
knowledge and culture that constitute the deepest set of beliefs about how the world works, about potential hazards, and about perceptions of organizational capabilities. This mindset can remain resistant to change because social beliefs and assumptions remain largely unstated (Meadows 1999).
2. At the supervisory level, safety goals are passed onto supervi-sors and are transformed into specific plans for action that are assigned to different practitioners. This level should specify a set of explicit plans and procedures for risk control in order to guide and co-ordinate the execution level. New hazards reported from the execution level should result in an update of the plans and procedures.
3. At the execution level, sharp-end practitioners (e.g., air traffic controllers, flight crew, and airport staff) translate policies, procedures, and standards into specific practices in order to adapt to variations in the environment. The primary control of hazards takes place through the actions of practitioners directly in contact with the system. To assess the adequacy of safety plans and update the mental models, a feedback loop is established to the higher levels of supervision and management.
Operational loop
Company policy, strategy, and safety culture
Supervision
Operational practices (execution level)
Company policy Systems of work change initiatives
Procedures resources
training risk analysis Audits
safety monitoring Safety process
indicators
Organizational loop
Figure 3.5 System safety as a control process between organizational levels.
SAFETY ORGANIZATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT 79
A periodic review of the SMS can be triggered by trends in safety performance, benchmarking with other competitors, unexpected events, and finally, changes in the company situation or policy. This review can result in rethinking the framework of risk control, in better adjustments to changes of the organizational structure, or in chal-lenging new performance targets.
The SMS translates the theoretical ICAO SMS framework com-ponents into a working process. Safety policy sets the framework for designing plans and procedures at the supervision level. The execution level translates plans and procedures into specific actions for manag-ing operations in an efficient and safe manner. At this level, practitio-ners interact with the technical system and manage risks by making use of their safety procedures and resources. The SMS elements can-not be maintained without good training, proactive communication, and a positive safety culture. Although the integration and deploy-ment of SMS eledeploy-ments is critical to their success, safety risk manage-ment remains a keystone of SMS, which is discussed in the following section.
A systemic control view of safety allows analysts to pay closer attention to its dynamics and modes of control. With regard to system dynamics, the organizational and operational loops may have differ-ent timescales of change, which affects the flow of control actions and feedback and hence, the way that control loops work in enforcing safety. For instance, safety issues at the operational loop (e.g., inci-dent reports, warnings, and change requests) have a timescale mea-sured in hours, days, hours, or weeks. In contrast, safety policies at the organizational loop may take months to develop or change, which may keep this level behind current technologies and practices. Such time lags may result in asynchronous evolution of the control struc-ture (Leveson 2012). Risk analysis must include the influence of these time lags and potential changes over time (McDonald et al. 2011). A common way to deal with time lags and delays is to delegate authority to lower levels that are faster in obtaining operational feedback and in making timely decisions.
With regard to modes of control, authority and coordination may be enforced either in a prescriptive mode (i.e., feedforward control or coordination by rules) or in a loosely implemented mode as perfor-mance objectives with many degrees of freedom to match the local
8 0 COGNITIVE ENGINEERING AND SAFETY ORGANIZATION
context (feedback control or coordination by mutual adjustment).
Two-way communication channels are used to exchange formal and informal information between practitioners or between organiza-tional levels. External communication of the organization with regu-latory institutions and public interest groups could also be considered in order to examine the organizational interface with the environ-ment. In addition, coordination can be viewed at the management and supervisory levels required to synchronize management of change and organizational reforms.