Monday, April 8, 2013

State Safety Program Requirements


State Safety Program Requirements Outlined

A State Safety Program is integrated set of regulations and activities aimed at improving safety. These activities require tools to facilitate the management of:

Safety Oversight

civil aviation authority state safety program for aviation safety management systems
Civil aviation authorities can easily monitor the safety activities of their aviation service providers when using SMS Pro™ on a national or regional level. Conduct audits either on an “issue” level or system-wide level using SMS Pro’s built-in auditing features.

Quickly review reports of particular service providers or review reports of industry segments, such as airlines, airports, maintenance or air traffic control operations. Management portals can easily group these industry segments, or consolidate all operators under a single management portal. For most implementations, management portals for industry segments make the most sense.

Accident/Incident Investigation

SMS Pro™ has a very complete investigation module that can be used by both states and service providers. States can easily review ongoing investigation being performed by service providers or start their own investigation in their management portal.

Operators can systematically conduct root cause analysis or human factors investigations using the investigation module. Using SMS Pro’s Issue Manager is also considered a formal investigation by some civil aviation authorities who don’t require such detailed investigations.

Mandatory/Voluntary Reporting Systems

Facilitate service providers’ automated event reporting by providing SMS Pro™ to each service provider. States can be immediate notified in many flexible ways. For example, when events are reported, states can be automatically alerted via email at the time of the report. Alternatively, Safety Managers at each company can easily send an automated email to civil aviation authorities for specific types of issues.

When operators can easily report hazards simultaneously to both their parent companies and their civil aviation authorities, both parties win.

Safety Data Analysis

Gathering data from an entire country of service providers remains a daunting task. SMS Pro™ allows states to instantly aggregate reports in many flexible ways. Focus on an industry segment, such as airports, or drill into a specific company to determine safety challenges the company may be facing.

Reports are generated in real time and can focus on types of issues, root causes, key performance indicators or associated hazards. Furthermore, SMS Pro™ is flexible to easily accommodate additional reports based on client requirements.

Safety Promotion

Communicating safety to an entire country’s aviation service providers can be easily accomplished using SMS Pro™ Newsletters module. Also, conduct surveys or generate “Must Read” or “Must Acknowledge” messages for specific user groups within an organization.



Aviation Safety Management Software


About NWDS - founded in 2003 by six software engineers, NorthWest Data Solutions (NWDS) provides custom computer programming and systems design services. NWDS creates many types of software, including e-commerce, financial, defense, engineering, logistics, aviation and more. In 2007, NWDS developed SMS Pro™ a web based SMS application that supports an organization's overall SMS through safety reporting, safety documentation, safety risk management and safety assurance. SMS Pro™ is currently used by aviation organizations in the U.S., Canada, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East to help manage their SMS programs. NWDS continues to support SMS Pro™ and add new functionality. NWDS offers custom contract programming services in the U.S. and Canada and is managed by Chris Howell, one of the founders. Their headquarters is in Anchorage, Alaska. For information on NWDS visit their website at www.nwds-ak.com and www.asms-pro.com to learn more about SMS Pro™.