Safety Management Systems (SMS) have been around for decades and represent a systematic way for organizations to manage hazards and risks. SMS is comprised of policies, objectives, plans, procedures, responsibilities, and other measures, like training and curriculum. In addition to aviation, many industries are embracing SMS including petroleum, medical, and nuclear power.
As a global leader in aviation safety, the FAA is also adopting SMS. As the agency continues to evolve, it is systematically integrating the management of safety risk into business planning, operations, and decision making. Thanks to personnel at the FAA Academy specifically the Regulatory Standards Division (AMA-200), employees have taken an organizational risk management model, known as the Strategic Training Organizational Risk Management System (STORMS), and are preparing to implement it as a standard business practice. Brian Rochester, Division Manager (AMA-200) asserts, “STORMS supports the agency’s commitment to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world, by ensuring that the Academy provides the highest quality aviation safety and technical training.”
AMA-200 beta tested and implemented a program known as the Curriculum Risk Assessment from 2015 to 2018. STORMS further incorporates key risk management principles established and founded in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 19, and the FAA’s National SMS Order 8000.369 as well as Risk Management Order 8040.4, which provide guidance on threat and hazard identification, risk assessment, analysis and management. STORMS also supports existing FAA Academy programs such as Quality Management Systems (QMS), International Organizational for Standardization (ISO) requirements, and Risk Based Decision Making (RBDM) standards. STORMS identifies hazards to the Agency, the Academy, and any of its stakeholders that may pose risk and could affect the safety of the National Aerospace System (NAS), FAA employees, and the agency’s public image, including its accountability to the public or Congress.
STORMS provides a framework to look at all organizational hazards and risks across the Academy’s daily business operations. The process involves input from employees, stakeholders and customers, as these are the individuals that encounter risks frequently. This allows personnel to proactively evaluate trends of information to provide an operational view of how the Academy is performing and how products can be improved. Having employee’s direct input is vital to making this system functional. “The key aspect of STORMS is the identification of issues that adversely affect the delivery of training at the FAA Academy and identifying the entity that has the power to affect positive change, i.e. fix the problem. The STORMS process not only identifies the issue, but the solution, and the entity that can execute the solution, ”says Paul Parenica, Lead Project Manager of the STORMS initiative.
STORMS evaluates three separate components:
Through STORMS, emphasis is placed on the products that are delivered throughout the Academy and it provides a means to communicate internally and externally to all lines-of-business and stakeholders. “STORMS represents things that we are already doing, but it better aligns with a Safety Management System,” says Rochester. It is a standardized means of measuring risk and accounting for the little nuances within each Academy division to effectively and formally conduct risk based decision making. It also supports the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center’s (MMAC) existing Quality Management System requirements as an ISO 9001 certificated organization. This effort helped give the MMAC a leg up in eliminating or minimizing negative effects of organizational risk. Ensuring that STORMS is fully implemented into the Academy’s Business Management System while also being in compliance with the ISO 9001 Standard, Brett Frantom, Quality Programs Manager for the FAA Academy describes the undertaking; “We quickly realized that this program will need to be constantly evolving for very important reasons. First and foremost, as more Academy employees become involved, they are sharing their ideas to improve our processes and we’re taking advantage of that. Secondly, the National Aerospace System is a very dynamic environment, so our program will need to be flexible in order to meet new challenges and address those risks. Finally, STORMS will be so ingrained into our operations that it will drive important decision making. Right now we’re just getting started, so as a program it has a long way to go before full maturity.”
Continuous improvement is the name of the game among all Academy organizations. Since Safety is the foundational platform of why the FAA was created, it makes good business sense for the agency to help close the loop on the SMS lifecycle that interconnects with each of the components like safety policy, safety risk management, etc. Employees are encouraged and empowered to challenge assumptions, have open dialogue about potential risk issues and look at their work from diverse perspectives. STORMS is here and Academy personnel are navigating the clouds of risk management. As summarized by John Withner, Deputy Division Manager, AMA-200, “STORMS is the next step in the evolution of how the Academy assesses the products they provide.”
