Safety Management

Safety management is the foundation of all safety-of-life industries. ICAO defines safety as the state in which the possibility of harm to persons, or of property damage, is reduced to and maintained at or below an acceptable level through a continuing process of hazard identification and safety risk management.

Meeting and maintaining compliance with ATM safety targets is complex. Requirements are derived from analysis that must integrate the impacts on multiple actors across a variety of airport environments, and apportion mitigating strategies across a range of domains, systems and components. There are various industry guides and regulations: in Europe, EASA provides a substantial set of regulations — with Regulation (EU) 2017/373 now central — while ICAO provides Annex 19 and supporting guidance, and the CANSO Standard of Excellence offers a further benchmark.

AVISU holds international expertise at the cutting edge of safety analysis practices and models that are compliant with, and accepted by, the world’s major safety authorities. Our AVISIM tool performs assessments and ‘what-if’ analyses under these criteria.

Safety Policy

The safety policy outlines the aims and objectives an organisation uses to achieve its desired safety outcomes, declaring the principles that lay the foundation for its safety culture. Management commitment and a clear establishment of responsibilities and accountabilities, from top to bottom, are essential. Human resource processes must integrate safety as a key skill, and the policy must ensure appropriate contingency and emergency arrangements should failures occur.

Safety Promotion

EASA describes safety promotion as the means, processes and procedures used to develop, sustain and improve safety through awareness-raising and changing behaviours. Methods are diverse — tailored training, face-to-face forums, computer-based training, bulletins, safety events and open discussion. AVISU believes there is no one-size-fits-all; an imaginative and engaging approach is the most valuable way to promote the benefits of a safe organisation.

Risk Management

Safety Risk Management is one of the most complex practical applications organisations struggle with. A truly safe organisation ensures risk management is understood and applied by all staff — understanding the operating environment, mapping the system to that environment, and identifying, assessing and mitigating hazards. AVISU has substantial experience developing these processes and establishing, verifying and validating system safety requirements.

Safety Assurance

The FAA describes safety assurance as evaluating the continued effectiveness of implemented risk controls and supporting the identification of new hazards. It is a proactive process requiring well-established systems to identify safety performance indicators in real time and through historical trend analysis, always seeking continuous improvement.

Compliance and Certification

To obtain certification against a regulator’s requirements, an organisation must understand what safety truly is. Certification is not just about meeting requirements; it is about enacting change within the organisation. The common belief that safety and business requirements conflict is mistaken — they are mutually beneficial when the business is considered holistically and true change management principles are adopted early. AVISU is one of the select few support companies to have been involved in the whole certification lifecycle of an entire ATM service delivery.