Hazard Identification and Risk Management

Aviation SMS should include formal risk assessment programs identifying flight-related hazards at your flight operations. Hazards are “a source of potential or a situation with a potential to cause loss”.

Many ways exist to identify flight-related hazards in your flight operations. Depending on size and complexity of flight operations, the following methods may be useful:

• Brainstorming, where small discussion groups meet to generate ideas in a nonjudgmental way;
• Formal review of the organizations aviation safety standards, procedures and systems using checklists generated by staff familiar with audit processes;
• Surveys or questionnaires of staff;
• Internally or externally conducted aviation safety assessments and technical inspections;
• Confidential reporting systems.

Some flight-related hazards at flight-operations may be obvious, such as ineffective bird management, or they may be more subtle, such as utilizing inexperienced staff.

Having identified safety hazards at your flight-operations, they to be assessed and ranked in order of risk potential. Factors to consider are likelihood of occurrence and severity of consequences. Priorities can be established and strategies implemented to remove or manage aviation safety hazards.

Recognize aviation safety hazard identification and risk assessment are not static processes. Aviation safety hazard identification and risk assessment need to be performed whenever:

• Planned Major organizational change;
• Rapid expansion or contraction of flight operations;
• Introduction of new equipment or facilities being considered;
• Decommission existing equipment;
• Planned introduction of new procedures;
• Revised existing procedures;
• Changes to key personnel;
• Changes to the legislation flight organization operates under.

Eight-step process relates to any flight operation. Eight step process involves:

1. Aviation Safety Policy
2. Management accountability
3. Establish process to manage flight-safety risks
4. Setting up a aviation safety reporting system to record flight hazards, risks and actions taken
5. Training and educating staff
6. Auditing flight operations and investigating incidents and accidents
7. Setting up aviation safety management system to control documentation and data
8. Evaluating how aviation safety management system is operating