Enhancing safety management system in an offshore aviation company

The main aim of the research is to enhance the safety management system through the introduction and tracking of safety performance indicator “non-compliance per flight hour”. All the non-compliances related to the main operational departments were gathered from the data base of the case study company for the year 2014. It was found that the non-compliances per flight hour were highest from the Aircraft Maintenance Department with the exact number being 3.30 non-compliances per flight hour. The scope of this research was therefore focused on the Aircraft Maintenance Department. Aircraft maintenance is a large department so the next step in the research was to narrow the focus to high risk events in the Aircraft Maintenance Department. Standard aviation Risk Assessment Matrix was used to assess all activities in aircraft maintenance department and the result showed “Release of an unairworthy aircraft to service” as the highest risk event that could happen from the Aircraft Maintenance Department. So, to be more specific, the research will be on how to lower the chances of this particular event ever occurring in the Aircraft Maintenance Department and thus enhancing safety management system with the improvement of the safety performance indicator “non-compliance per flight hour”. All possible root causes for the event “Release of an unairworthy aircraft to service” were identified from brainstorming. A total of 24 root causes were identified. Then the database of the non-compliances was looked at again to map each of the non-compliances in the year 2014 from the Technical Department to one of the root causes. The severity of each of the root causes were looked at as well. From the two results (severity and contribution to non-compliances), the top root causes were identified. Four top root causes were identified as follows: Aircraft/component structural failure or complex systems failure, Aircraft fuelled with contamination, Lack of human, financial, asset resources and inadequate working environment, Inadequate work instruction/reference/information. Several systems, processes, organizational restructuring and resources were put in place to lower the chances of the root cause from happening as much as possible. The safety performance indicator was again measured after implementation for the first 5 months of 2015. The results from different sources are as follows. Employee reports: decrease from 1.67 to 1.60 (4%), Customer reports: decrease from 0.30 to 0 (100%), Internal audit reports: decrease from 1.23 to 0.89 (28%), Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) reports: decrease from 0.10 to 0 (100%), Overall: decrease from 3.30 to 2.49 (25%).