S M S

SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Why is a Safety Management System (SMS) essential to modern railway operations?

An effective safety management system uses risk and quality management methods to achieve its safety objectives and is a systematic approach to managing safety, including the necessary organisational structures, accountabilities, policies and procedures. In addition, SMS also provides the organisational framework to establish and foster the development of a positive, corporate safety culture. The implementation of an SMS gives the organisation’s management a structured set of tools to meet their responsibilities for safety as defined by their regulator.

Management Commitment

Safety Policy

Establishes senior management commitment to continually improve safety. Defines methods and processes needed to meetsafety goals.

Safety Assurance

Evaluates the continued effectiveness of implemented risk control strategies.

Safety Promotion

Includes training, communication and other actions to create a safety culture across all levels of the workforce.

Safety Risk Management

Continuous hazard identification that results in risk assessment process to determine suitable control mechanisms.

Risk is probably the most important management process to understand. All railway organisations must accept that they are exposed to risk but what is important is the recognition of those risks and then how they are controlled to an acceptable (tolerable) level. Of course, unless there exists a healthy and robust reporting culture, management will be unaware of the many hazards that may be present in their operation. The reporting culture will make or break the SMS.

Fundamentals of Safety Management

Over the past 70 years, our approach to safety management has changed. Back in the early 50's, safety was concerned primarily with the investigation of accidents: a very reactive process. Eventually, there was the recognition that humans and human performance were a significant contributor to railway accidents: to this day, human factors influence some 80% of events.

Other factors influence the human condition such as the effects of organisational policy (cost cutting, fatigue inducing roster patterns etc.). Furthermore, the general company culture could result in adverse human performance especially those with a “why fix it if it is not broken” attitude. A railway must embrace and promote an enterprise-wide safety culture.

Enterprise-wide safety culture

Modern safety systems will assess all potential root causes of an incident including a thorough drill upwards through the company to determine if there are other organisational or cultural factors at play. Clearly, management have to conduct a careful balancing act between protection and commercial production as shown in the diagram below. To much focus on protection can limit the operation to the point of bankruptcy, whereas overstretching limited resources to achieve high levels of production can cause mistakes and errors which may lead to serious incidents. By carefully balancing financial and safety management, managers can confine their operation within the "Safety Railway".

The Management Dilemma

In order to allow management to make defensible and correct safety-based decisions, they need to be presented with appropriate information to determine the risk landscape to which their organisation is exposed. This can only be achieved by the establishment of a robust reporting culture in which employees are fully engaged in the management of safety.

All operators are required to establish a Safety Program which, in turn, suggests that all service providers within the rail industry must formulate their own safety management system (SMS) that not only encapsulates the requirements above but also includes the definition of a ‘Company Safety Policy’ and the active promotion of safety throughout the business.

The four required processes are Safety Risk Management, Safety Assurance, Safety Promotion and Safety Policy. All of these components in the SMS are underpinned by “Management Commitment” which is a fundamental requirement to establish a robust SMS within the business. The SMS will underperform if the management team fail to engage their workforce and encourage a healthy and robust reporting culture.

Safety and reporting culture

A good organisational culture is often the prime catalyst for the effectiveness of a safety management system and indeed, SMS implementation. An effective safety management system can only be achieved by the establishment of a good reporting culture, and this can only be delivered if an railway operator has an enterprise-wide approach to safety and a positive, supportive human resource management structure.

The effectiveness of an railway safety management system (SMS) is often measured by the number of reports it receives, therefore, providing an environment and the right technology that encourages voluntary reporting is a critical dynamic in a fully functioning SMS.

Supporting Voluntary Reporting

The problem some railway companies faces is how to develop such an approach when voluntary reporting has traditionally been low. Although a difficult thing to achieve, it is possible with appropriate management commitment and communication, and it is acknowledged that the safest railway companies in the world have a higher than average level of voluntary reports. One thing in common to all of these railway companies is that Safety is taken seriously at an enterprise-wide level.

There are three main areas that can have a material effect upon a good reporting culture:

Safety Policy

The organisation must produce and distribute a Safety Policy that is underwritten by the accountable manager (Usually the CEO). This Safety Policy will outline the corporate safety objectives and also identify those managers who have specific safety responsibilities and accountabilities.

Safety Promotion

Safety promotion is crucial. The workforce will never feel fully engaged in safety management unless the senior team promote their policies and objectives widely.

Reporting Systems

Providing the workforce with the means to submit reports easily is a vital element in a SMS. Additionally, it provides the safety management team with the ability to store, retrieve and analyse the submitted reports. This is known collectively as the Safety Data Collection and Processing System (SDCPS) and it forms an integral part of the SMS.

Culture is at The Heart Of Safety

In general a failure to understand or address the culture element within an organisation, will mean that the safety management system will not perform as intended. As a consequence, the number of reports will be low, the level of hazard identification poor and the risk of incidents much higher. This in turn can have a dramatic effect upon the commercial effectiveness of the organisation, the ability to allocate limited resources effectively to reduce areas of potential safety and, at a corporate level, an impact upon the balance sheet. Culture is at the heart of an effective, efficient and commercially successful business.