The second component of a Safety Management System
is safety risk management.
This is a situation where an organisation needs to identify
those risks that exist within their organisation
or they are exposed to,
and manage them in some way.
Safety risk management is really just the collation
of all those things that have potential to do harm
to an organisation.
And some organisations that we go into
feel that this is a difficult task to achieve,
but often it's as simple as sitting down -
and we've seen this in some organisations -
sitting down at a toolbox meeting in the hangar
and just letting everyone have their say
about where they feel the risks are in the organisation,
be it a physical risk within the hangar,
or some sort of strategic risk to the organisation.
And all they've done is simply captured them
and worked through how they're going to mitigate against them
or work with them
or lessen the potential for that hazard
to cause harm to an organisation.
And before you know it, the ideas are flowing in
through brainstorming sessions,
through previous reports that they might have made,
through audits, or external ideas that they've got
from other organisations.
And suddenly they're starting to recognise
all those risks and hazards that exist within their organisation
and they're starting to gain
an understanding of how to deal with them,
and that's part of a Safety Management System.
This can be the make or break for a business, of course.
Do you take the deal? Do you fly the cargo?
Do you not take that flight?
And so production pressures tend to be very acute,
and safety concerns
then sort of slide to the background
because they're more chronic and they're always there,
and so they're not as acute.
Do they have in them the social capacity to say,
"No, we're not going to take that flight"?
Or for one person in that little company
to stand up and say to the others,
"Guys, I don't think this is a good idea. Let's not do it.
"Let's take this small sacrifice
"to invest in the larger margin of surviving."
If they have that capacity,
that would give me confidence again of their resilience,
their ability to recognise, adapt to, and absorb
the risks and hazards that are out there
before they're being pushed out of their comfort zone
and across the edge of where they may not cope and may fail.
Part of having a reporting culture
is feedback to the people who are reporting.
And not every report will require some sort of action to be taken,
but at least letting the author of the report know
why action won't be taken,
or, hopefully, keep them enthused
to report the next event that they see.
People in key positions in the Safety Management System
need to be enthusiastic.
As the video says, they need to be champions of the cause.
They need to have a good understanding
of what a Safety Management System is,
but believe in it and be passionate about it.
They need to be supported, certainly, by the management team.
WOMAN: So I love risk management.
To me it's like business management.
Risk management's used, as you would be aware, all around many industries.
It doesn't necessarily relate to safety.
It's financial risk or risk of lack of compliance.
So I think it's where I can show the Safety Management System
as a great business tool.
Whenever there's any sort of change,
it has to follow a process which includes risk management.
So it's reminding people of our documented procedures,
showing my face around the office and asking questions.
I think a safety manager has to have good communication
with all the department managers and offers support
and say, "Well, my department can do this for you,
"and I can then provide you with a report
"that will show you the possible hazards
"and areas that we may not consider
"for that particular thing you would like to implement,"
even if it was in our engineering department.
Our reporting culture is actually very strong.
We have several thousand reports within our system.
It's the way we do business.
If we experience an event,
we're even reporting events that haven't occurred yet,
so we're very proactive in how we do that.
We have this culture of identifying unsafe circumstances,
unsafe acts, and, obviously, maintenance practices
where there was either a genuine maintenance error
or there was a likelihood of an error occurring.
MATT McKAY: With any hazard and risk, yes, it needs to be documented,
and in most cases it's going to be measured against a risk matrix
to work out where it sits
in terms of its potential to cause harm.
It doesn't matter what your position, you identify some form of hazard,
you have access to a hazard report.
And that will be dealt with within the Safety Management System
that will register, mitigate and deal with these hazards
and then, more importantly, communicate that back
to the organisation and the people in it
so that there's a closing of the loop,
and that's a critical component within a Safety Management System.