Avionics News January 2013 - 14

In this monthly column, Ric Peri of the AEA’s Washington, D.C., office, informs members of the latest regulatory updates.

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P E R I A EA V I C E P R ES I D E N T O F G OV E R N M E N T & I N D U ST RY A F FA I RS

Safety Management Systems A
s we ring in the New Year, it seems appropriate to recap the Aircraft Electronics Association’s efforts on safety management systems. Recently, I was at Federal Aviation Administration headquarters and ran into an old-time friend who leads the office responsible for the FAA’s (state) safety program. Implementing the industry’s SMS is an element of his responsibilities. He commended the AEA for its efforts in the development and deployment of its SMS solution – something along the lines that the AEA finally “drank the SMS Kool-Aid.” Well, not exactly. Our position has been, and still remains, that if SMS is brought into an organization as a stand-alone safety management system, it is costly, excessive, problematic and, in my humble opinion, destined to fail. As an organization, we are all about safety. Throughout its more than 50-year history, the AEA has leveraged the knowledge and experience of its individual members to advance the avionics industry as a whole. It is the marriage of these two principles that propelled the association into looking into the benefits of safety management. There are two components to SMS: safety and a management system. I’ve been working for more than 50 years and have never worked in a business that didn’t offer some concern for safety. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for work safety have always been in the background, as well as the safety of customers and motor-vehicle safety for transportation. From a safety perspective, I think it is reasonable to say we all strive to be safe. Again, every business
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I have been associated with has had a management system – some stronger than others, some more formal, some more structured; but every business has a management system. In its Safety Management Manual, the International Civil Aviation Organization directs the states that “before developing a state safety program implementation plan, a gap analysis of existing state structures and processes against the ICAO SSP framework is needed to assess the existence and maturity of the respective SSP elements. The elements, or processes identified as requiring action as a result of the gap analysis, form the basis of the SSP implementation plan.” As an industry, we determined (1) we have a safety standard, and (2) we have a management system. The safety standards may be primarily OSHA driven, but we have a safety objective. As we discussed earlier, every successful business has a management system. We knew that both areas could be better, and the purpose and elements of ICAO’s SMS program could make our industry better. Unlike the other elements of aviation, the AEA and its members have one thing in common: We are all bound by the authority and limitation of the FAA’s Part 145 regulations, or the international equivalents. The repair station regulations are, by definition, a management system necessary to receive and continue certification as an approved maintenance organization – a management system that is audited regularly by the authorities. Look at the expositions (manuals) the repair stations develop and follow. The system management will use the system to make decisions, assure quality, control tools and document the work performed. You get the point. The repair station’s expositions are

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january

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Avionics News January 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News January 2013