SMS vs QMS vs WHS
A service provider may have many management systems. The challenge is to integrate them across the organisation to produce maximum efficiency. Typically the number of systems depends on the size and complexity of the organisation and may include:
- Safety Management System
- Quality Management System
- Financial Management System
- Environmental Management System
- Security Management System
- Work Health and Safety Management System
It is perhaps the QMS that SMS are most integrated with due to a number of common aspects.
Aspects include;
- The SMS is supported by QMS processes such as auditing, inspection, investigation, root cause analysis, process design, statistical analysis and preventive measures
- QMS may anticipate safety issues that exist despite the organization’s compliance with standards and specifications
- QMS principles, policies and practices are linked to the policies and objectives of SMS.
From CAA NZ SMS Booklet 2
Can QMS affect Safety?
- Poor workmanship?
- Incorrect part fitment?
- Poor customer service?
- Bad in-flight meals?
- Poor On Time Performance?
How does Safety culture affect QMS? How does QMS affect the reputation of a company?
Comparison of principles between QMS and SMS (From the ICAO SMM Doc 9858)
Work Health Safety (WHS or OHS / OH&S / HES / HSE / …)
The Work Health Safety system is about people. It will focus on unsafe acts and personal injury outcomes. Personnel can choose between safe and unsafe behaviour (active failures), and an organisation may have unsafe procedures or practices that are not known (latent failures).
WHS will tend to be reactive to hazards (something unsafe occurs – a control is put in place to prevent re-occurrence) or proactive (Something is identified as a hazard and a control is implemented before an occurrence happens), but it will be about personal injury rather than organisational risks.
WHS Due Diligence (Safework Australia)
Integrated risk management
SMS can encompass both QMS and WHS with common practices such as auditing, inspection, investigation, root cause analysis, process design, statistical analysis and preventive measures. The systems need to be integrated.
Examples are as follows:
- A cabin crew member was injured by boiling water in the galley.
- WHS – Why was the person injured?
- QMS – what equipment failed to allow this to occur?
- SMS – What are the aircraft emergency implications of being a crew member down?
- An airside door is found to be open.
- WHS – Persons could access the dangerous airside area.
- QMS – Why did the door not auto close and lock?
- SMS – Unauthorised access to airside is a risk to aircraft.
Consider an Elevated Work Platform – used to access high points on aircraft and inside the hanger.
It is maintained ‘In-house’ by company workers.
The handrail and harness hardpoint are un-serviceable on the platform. Both could fail under normal conditions of use.
Consider the worst case scenario occurring – that a worker falls out of the platform from height. How might this be investigated from WHS, QMS and SMS perspectives looking at:
The unserviceable handrail and hardpoint are clearly causal factors in the outcome. Consider this from:
The WHS managers perspective
The QMS managers perspective
The SMS managers perspective
While all outcomes / consequences are undesirable, only the loss of company reputation can be ‘company ending’. A negative, newsworthy event in aviation will affect reputation. The worse the outcome, the greater the negative affect on reputation.
However, if the final root cause (Poor safety culture) can be corrected, it would have empowered workers in the first instance (WHS) to speak up about an unsafe work condition.
Hence the need for SMS to be integrated with WHS and QM Systems.
There is no reason why WHS, QMS and SMS personnel cannot be the same. An ‘event’ could have implications for all three systems. All too often, there is a tendency to create silos around each system preventing them ‘talking’ each other.
For example, inadvertent manipulation of aircraft throttles in a maintenance hanger could have potential to:
- Injure personnel working on other parts of the aircraft (WHS)
- Affect throttle rigging and maintenance compliance (QMS)
- Ultimately affect the safety of the aircraft if the manipulation is not detected (SMS)
Personnel that recognise all three outcomes are ideal for input into all three systems. QMS personnel are often best positioned to consider issues ‘down’ to WHS and ‘up’ to SMS.
From the ICAO Safety Management Manual 4th Edition