Whether you are an individual sole trader, a partner, or a director of an aviation business, you have a duty to act with care and diligence.  This not only applies to the financial state of the business, but also to the safety health of its operations.

One of the responsibilities of a Proprietor, Partnership or Board is to oversee operations and assure itself that they are consistent with the achievement with the business goals.  All aviation businesses have a safety goal in addition to other business goals.  Safety is a most significant goal in the this industry.  If consumers, financiers, or the regulator looses confidence in you, your business is in serious trouble.

I have made comments previously about the relationship between good governance, business performance and safety.  I have written a BLOG about related matters previously - Click here.  In my experience, many safety and compliance situations occur because the sole trader, partners or directors have not been attentative enough to reviewing the safety of operations.

Unfortunately, some businesses only become seriously interested in operations after an accident or incident or have a regulatory problem, when in fact, the controlling mind of the business has a continious obligation to be aware of the operational safety state of the operations.  This does not infer that dedicated Board members need to become business micro managers, but rather establish a system of safety review.  This may form part of the Safety Managment System (SMS) or be a separate Board initiated function which in itself, includes a review of the SMS.   The review may be undertaken internally or by external and impartial people.

Although an accident can occur to any business due to a number of reasons, the risks can be identified and mitigated.   An effective SMS is a good way of formalizing the risk managment process - there are other advantages too, which I will not go into here.

In my experience, an accident or regulatory compliance problem is generally preceeded by subtle signs which could have been identified and a wider problem addressed.  Sometimes line management do not see the signs because they are too close to the operations.   By way of example only, some of these subtle signs may include;

•  Turn over of high performing key staff
• A reluctance to allocate resources to training and development
• Staff claim not to know what is going on in the business
• Staff are required to work unscheduled additional time on a regular basis
• Written procedures are inconsistent with work practices thereby regularizing non-conformance
• Procedures are poorly organized and difficult to follow having "grown" with the business
• Procedures are not regularly reviewed
• A reluctance of staff to report otherwise unknown incidents or events
• Aircraft carry numerous defects on a regular basis
• Managers always report that everthing is OK or the SMS will address the issue.

There are 10 examples here, and it would be easy to write another 10.  The point is that if you are aware of what is going on, and get a few indicators, it may be time for an impartial review.

See my new book, "Safety Management without the Mumbo Jumbo" available in hard copy and e-Book from Palmer Higgs web bookstore www.palmerhiggs.com.au or AMAZON www.amazon.com (E-Book only).