Service 02
Safety management systems that people actually report into.
SMS design, occurrence reporting, safety performance indicators and risk assessment for operators who want a system that surfaces problems early — not one that produces compliant paperwork about problems it never saw.
What this is
A safety system is only as good as its worst report.
Every operator has an SMS on paper. The question that matters is whether a first officer who made a mistake on Tuesday files a report about it on Wednesday. If they do not, the manual is a formality and the organisation is flying on the assumption that nothing is going wrong.
This work starts with the reporting culture, because everything downstream depends on it. Then the mechanics: hazard identification that produces usable entries rather than a backlog, risk assessment that distinguishes tolerable from tolerated, and safety performance indicators that measure something you would actually change your behaviour over.
Threat and Error Management runs through it as the shared language — the same framing used in the briefing room, in the report form and in the safety review. One vocabulary, so a hazard raised by a line crew arrives at the safety board in a form the board recognises.
Scope
What the work covers.
SMS design and gap analysis
Assessing what exists against ICAO Annex 19 and the applicable EASA requirements, then closing the gaps that matter.
Occurrence reporting
Report forms, triage and feedback loops designed so reporting is quick and being reported on is not punitive.
Safety performance indicators
Indicators tied to actual operational risk, with alert and target levels that mean something.
Risk assessment and mitigation
Assessments that hold up under challenge, with mitigations traced to who owns them and by when.
Safety culture
The practical side: just-culture policy, how the first report after an incident is handled, and what people see happen next.
Threat & Error Management
TEM embedded as the shared vocabulary across briefings, reports and safety reviews.
Safety review boards
Agenda, inputs and follow-up structure, so the meeting produces decisions rather than minutes.
Investigation support
Internal occurrence investigation methodology and support for writing up findings defensibly.
Typical engagement
How the work runs.
Sized to the organisation. A four-week review and a six-month implementation follow the same shape.
Baseline
What the SMS looks like on paper, and what the reporting data says is actually happening.
Design
Processes, forms and indicators, sized to the organisation rather than to the regulation.
Embedding
Briefing the people who file reports and the people who act on them. This is where SMS projects usually fail.
Review
A cycle back after the system has been running, to see what it caught and what it missed.
Questions
What clients ask first.
Straight answers, including where the answer is that we are not the right people for it.
Passing an audit demonstrates the system exists and is documented. It does not demonstrate that it is finding hazards. The useful diagnostic is your reporting rate: a healthy small operator generates reports steadily, including minor ones from experienced crew. A system producing almost nothing is not a safe operation, it is a quiet one.
By changing what people observe rather than what they are told. The determining factor is what visibly happened to the last person who filed a report against themselves. Work concentrates on the handling of individual reports, feedback timelines, and making the outcome of a report visible to the person who filed it.
No. That is a nominated postholder role requiring accountability inside your organisation, and outsourcing it to a consultant would be the wrong answer even where it is formally permitted. The work supports your Safety Manager and can help you define the role before you recruit for it.
Reporting rate responds within a few months if the culture work is genuine. Indicators tied to operational outcomes need longer — often a year — because the events being measured are, correctly, rare. Any promise of faster measurable results is measuring the wrong thing.
Elsewhere on the site
Tell us what needs to happen.
Describe the operation, the standard you are working to, and the deadline. We reply within one working day.