Our Mission: "To assist our clients in developing the best possible Safety System to meet their needs".
 

Safety Review - What it is and why do I need it

Safety reviews come in many different forms.  Some will say that a regulatory audit of your company is a Safety review.  While the purpose of the audit may be to make your company Safer by ensuring it complies with the regulations, it is not a Safety review. It is a regulatory compliance audit: Nothing more. 

 First what is Safety?   There are many definitions of Safety but the simplest that I have seen is:  Safety is the absence of accidents or incidents.  If this were true the only way to achieve total Safety would be to leave all aircraft on the ground and not go near them.  Thus we have to think in terms of level or margin of Safety.  I believe: Safety is the application of all reasonable means to bring the risk of an accident or incident to the lowest practical level.

 Safety is very difficult to measure, as a company can be very unsafe and yet have few accidents while another practices all Safety measures and yet has a fatal accident.  To bring the risk of an accident to the lowest possible level one has to develop a “Safety culture”.  In order to do this one requires a Safety Management System.

 So what is a Safety review?  A Safety review seeks to identify the latent conditions that have the potential to cause an accident or incident.  These conditions are identified as hazards and are than measured in terms of probability,  severity and benefit.  The hazards are analyzed and will result in a statement of risk with some possible mitigating circumstances, that could eliminate or at least minimize the risk. 

 For example: 

A company has a docking station for a large body aircraft, which must be fully retracted in order for an aircraft to be pulled into the dock.

The Hazard is:  There is no visible means to know that the dock is fully retracted.

The Risk is:  The aircraft will strike the dock if it is not fully retracted.

The severity would be considered medium to high while

The probability may be low as the company has a policy to always fully retract the dock whenever it is pulled away.

A mitigating circumstance, which would help minimize the risk, would be to paint red lines, which give a positive visual clue that, the dock is in fact fully retracted.   Training to insure that all personnel check that the dock is at that line before towing an aircraft in, as well as a check sheet calling for this check would reduce the hazard to a minimum.

Note:  It took a $200,000.00 Cdn. crease in the side of a Boeing 747 before the company recognized the hazard.

 A Safety review looks for hazards that may be completely legal within regulations but which have the potential to cause an incident.  The purpose of the review is to identify hazards and bring them to the attention of the company management.  

 A safety study, performed by System Safety Services, is always performed by two persons to assist in the validation of potential hazards.   The study will begin by reviewing existing policies and determining if they are meeting their intended objective.  The study will talk to persons in the company for their opinion of the system.  Many times, we have found examples where the janitor was aware of a hazard, which the management was not aware of.  The system within the company did not provide a means for this knowledge to be communicated to management. 

 The results of the Safety Study will be completely confidential and will be released only to the person authorizing the study.  Once the study has been accepted no copies will be kept and all confidential information will be disposed of. 

Decisions to implement none, any or all mitigating circumstances rest solely with the management of the company.  Only management is in the position to accurately determine the most appropriate action to be taken.

 We will be pleased to assist in any way the company would like.

 Gordon Dupont

System Safety Services