Hugh McBain doesn’t buy the complacent old myth that the most dangerous part of his day is the drive from home to Moorabbin Airport.
‘Aviation is inherently dangerous,’ he says.
That’s why safety literally comes first for prospective pilots at the Royal Victorian Aero Club where McBain is safety manager. ‘We have briefings with students from day one talking about how safety works in aviation and fostering that healthy safety culture,’ he says.
The acceptance that risks exist is the necessary first step in managing and minimising them. ‘It’s up to us to teach what safety means and why it’s important,’ he says.
‘We do initial training with all staff, at the beginning of their employment and refresher training every 24 months.’
Another vital element is leadership. Management must show its commitment to the Safety Management System (SMS), by actions rather than occasional fine sounding words. McBain knows the spotlight is on him.
‘For me being in the safety team, I’ve got to set a good example,’ he says ‘I’ve always got to apply best safe practice and make sure that students are seeing me do that.’
‘Visible and consistent management commitment to safety management is essential for the creation of a culture that allows the system to work as designed. ‘Just culture,’ is a name for this state of affairs.’
‘It’s important that we have a just culture, so people need to feel at ease, and they need to feel as though they can talk to you about things without being punished,’ McBain says. ‘The idea of our Safety Management System is to fix issues, not put the blame on people.’
Monthly seminars are one of the club’s ways of nourishing a strong safety culture.
‘What we do with those seminars is we look at any deficiencies we are finding in our safety reporting system. There might be one thing in particular that people are having an issue with. So, we conduct a safety seminar on that issue to try and stamp it out. And we also have a safety bulletin system so we can put up safety bulletins for anything that’s upcoming, or any changes.’
Two-way informal communication is also important. ‘We do regular staff meetings to convey any safety issues we have, and we make it a discussion. We don’t want it to be as much of a lecture because unfortunately with a lecture-type situation, a lot of people shut off.
‘A discussion is a little bit healthier and it fosters other people’s opinions which in safety is quite important – to get other people’s ideas of how things should work and their point of view.’
For an SMS to be an integrated into part of everyday operations, as opposed to an impressive document gathering dust on a shelf, it has to be easy to use,’ McBain says.
‘We use a system called SMART that allows us to track our safety data but also has a friendly user interface for students and other pilots to input issues or safety occurrences they’ve had.
‘By doing that we’re able to hit all our objectives in our SMS and really analyse the data and see where we’re going wrong. And sometimes we can make changes for those deficiencies as well.’
‘I may have said this before, but the leadership team must be at the forefront to promote safety, it’s important so that everyone gets to see how vital it is.’
More information
Useful resources including a kit with videos to help you develop your Safety Management System are available on the CASA website.
