Improve Safeguarding on the Airfield and Prove Compliance
Wed 28/05/2003
A NEW PARADIGM
Continuously improving the safety of airport operating environments is nothing new and the civil aviation industry has long been at the forefront of the science of managing high risk environments. These efforts have to stay ahead of an increasingly safety conscious culture for the public to continue to choose to fly. Recently though, the awareness of the man on the street of hazards to aviation has undergone a step change and the whole industry needs to respond to the demands placed upon it.
An added complexity is that perceptions of safety and security are as important as the facts. For example, in a recent incident, BBC News reported a bird strike (manageable hazard) but failed to later report that on investigation, the damage was found to have been caused by the tail connecting with the tarmac during take off rotation (unmanageable hazard). Information is key to the airport's defence.
Responding to these sorts of pressures, there is a proactive approach where airports need to take into account the effects of ICAO Annexe 14's demands on airports to have safety management systems in place. Filtering down through the various governing organisations is a regulatory environment that is rewriting the rules to say "must" rather than "should" for more and more airfield processes. To date, safety policy and procedure has been reviewed and modified on an annual basis with extra information being factored in from post-incident investigations. Increasingly though, safety management systems need to be able to accommodate modern risk assessment techniques which require the collation and analysis of data on much faster cycle times of days, if not hours.
We also cannot ignore the reactive approach of an increasingly litigious environment where the post-incident burden is often on the airport to demonstrate enough was done to manage the causal hazard. The true high ground is found in applying best practice and fortunately some aviation hazard experts, such as the International Bird Strike Committee, are drafting these now.
So, you improve your safeguarding through implementing more stringent policies, you train staff and you invest in safeguarding equipment, but how can you show ‘due diligence' when there is still an incident? In effect, how do you PROVE that you were compliant?
Information is the common thread here, and airport operators need to review whether their safety management arrangements are up to the job. The systems need to be reviewed for the quality and integrity of data input as we all know that garbage in means garbage out. The systems need to have analytical tools to ensure that with some local expert knowledge, airfield managers can draw conclusions and make decisions. Complimenting this, airports need exception monitoring to escalate the critical information out of the rest of the data to those who need to take immediate action. Finally, despite all of these needs, the systems need to be flexible enough to encourage the continuous improvement of airfield processes and procedures from where we started this piece.
An added complexity is that perceptions of safety and security are as important as the facts. For example, in a recent incident, BBC News reported a bird strike (manageable hazard) but failed to later report that on investigation, the damage was found to have been caused by the tail connecting with the tarmac during take off rotation (unmanageable hazard). Information is key to the airport's defence.
Responding to these sorts of pressures, there is a proactive approach where airports need to take into account the effects of ICAO Annexe 14's demands on airports to have safety management systems in place. Filtering down through the various governing organisations is a regulatory environment that is rewriting the rules to say "must" rather than "should" for more and more airfield processes. To date, safety policy and procedure has been reviewed and modified on an annual basis with extra information being factored in from post-incident investigations. Increasingly though, safety management systems need to be able to accommodate modern risk assessment techniques which require the collation and analysis of data on much faster cycle times of days, if not hours.
We also cannot ignore the reactive approach of an increasingly litigious environment where the post-incident burden is often on the airport to demonstrate enough was done to manage the causal hazard. The true high ground is found in applying best practice and fortunately some aviation hazard experts, such as the International Bird Strike Committee, are drafting these now.
So, you improve your safeguarding through implementing more stringent policies, you train staff and you invest in safeguarding equipment, but how can you show ‘due diligence' when there is still an incident? In effect, how do you PROVE that you were compliant?
Information is the common thread here, and airport operators need to review whether their safety management arrangements are up to the job. The systems need to be reviewed for the quality and integrity of data input as we all know that garbage in means garbage out. The systems need to have analytical tools to ensure that with some local expert knowledge, airfield managers can draw conclusions and make decisions. Complimenting this, airports need exception monitoring to escalate the critical information out of the rest of the data to those who need to take immediate action. Finally, despite all of these needs, the systems need to be flexible enough to encourage the continuous improvement of airfield processes and procedures from where we started this piece.
Contact us to see how we can help you. info@clickairport.com