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Safety management systems (SMS) have become an integral part of aviation’s impressive safety record, used by airlines, airports and air navigation service providers (ANSP) alike.

Essentially, SMS instil a safety culture within an organisation, ensuring best practices are pursued and creating an environment that supports the non-punitive reporting of any and all safety concerns with the overall goal of maintaining and improving safety.

As part of implementing SMS within the air traffic management sector, CANSO released its Standard of Excellence in Safety Management Systems in 2015.

The publication sets out the ways to achieve compliance with ICAO Annex 19, which deals with safety. What it cannot do, of course, is determine whether or not an ANSP has actually met the guidelines set out by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

This is the prime reason for CANSO’s latest initiative. The CANSO Standard of Excellence in Air Navigation Services-Safety or SEANS-Safety is the next step in the CANSO SMS programme. It will assess and validate the SMS maturity levels of CANSO Member air navigation service providers (ANSPs). Based on the CANSO Standard of Excellence in Safety Management Systems, it is aligned to ICAO International Standards and Recommended Practices Annex 19, Safety Management.

Using independent CANSO assessors, SEANS-Safety will provide CANSO Members with an impartial, standardised means of assuring and demonstrating ANSP safety management capabilities

SMS instil a safety culture within an organisation, ensuring best practices are pursued with the overall goal of maintaining and improving safety.

SAFETy MANAGEMENT SySTEMS

Another leap forward for safetySEANS-Safety is a new CANSO initiative that will take safety management systems to the next level of effectiveness.

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internally and to regulators and ICAO. Through the programme, CANSO Members will be in a better position to standardise the elements of their SMSs, thus facilitating enhanced data analysis, safety risk management and performance measurement, which will result in higher overall levels of safety performance.

“SEANS-Safety will provide renewed impetus for ANSPs to implement effective, measurable, safety management systems, and will help them standardise the elements of their SMS,” says CANSO Director General, Jeff Poole. “This impartial standard will give the ANSP and State regulator confidence on the safety performance of the ANSP.”

How it worksAssessments are conducted by CANSO as the programme manager, but in all cases the organisation is assisted by another trained assessor who has appropriate local knowledge of the ANSP being assessed.

The assessment team provides advice and recommendations on areas that need attention during and after an assessment. Each ANSP that chooses to be assessed will be visited on a cyclical basis, which provides the opportunity for changes and improvements.

A new scoring system has been developed and tested to ensure the accuracy of the assessment. The work also includes a new format for the questionnaire sent to ANSPs waiting to be assessed that features simple “yes” or “no” answers, simplifying the process and adding clarity to the findings.

Greg Myles, CANSO’s Programme Manager for SEANS-Safety says a Level C (see chart) indicates alignment with ICAO Annex 19 guidelines. “So the goal for each ANSP that chooses to have an assessment done would be to achieve at least Level C,” he says.

In order to launch and pilot the SEANS-Safety initiative, CANSO will bear the initial start-up costs and the costs of the first three ANSP assessments. In the second phase, CANSO will continue to bear the costs of the Programme Manager, training and developing the programme, while the

ANSP will pay for the CANSO direct costs of travel and accommodation related to its assessment.

It is envisaged that SEANS-Safety will subsequently evolve to a fee-for-service activity (with ANSPs bearing the full costs).

The first “beta test” of the SEANS-Safety programme took place in Curaçao in summer 2016 and will be followed by assessments in New Zealand in October 2016 and South Africa and Saudi Arabia in early 2017.

Next levelAn original SMS questionnaire was sent to CANSO Members in 2002, so SEANS-Safety is, in one sense, simply the next step on the journey to 100% safety. But that does not tell the whole story of what the initiative can achieve.

Greg Myles says SEANS-Safety has the potential to be a game changer. Once regulators accept the CANSO programme as a valid measurement of SMS maturity, complying with ICAO guidelines as well as individual State regulatory needs, “the programme will lead to a safer industry through identifying areas of success that can be shared with others as well as areas that need support to improve,” he says.

“We have seen from safety programmes by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council

International (ACI) that these types of assessment programmes are recognised and highly regarded by the industry, States and ICAO,” Jeff Poole concludes.

“The time is ripe for CANSO to establish its own programme that sets the industry standard and enhances the use and effectiveness of safety management among ANSPs.”

SAFETy MANAGEMENT SySTEMS

SMS Maturity Survey.

New Zealand will beta test in October 2016.

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