How to Build an Aviation SMS That Works

If Luke and I had to build an Aviation SMS from scratch tomorrow, what would we actually do? Where would we start? What would we put in place straight away? What would we leave until later, and what would we probably never bother adding in the first place? That’s basically what we get into on this one. I'm joined by Luke Sutton, who I worked closely with for years and who also happens to be one of my best mates, so I’m really looking forward to this one. Between us, we’ve built, run, inherited, fixed and probably been guilty of overcomplicating a fair few management systems over the years 😂 We’ve also held roles including Safety Manager, Compliance Monitoring Manager, Head of Management Systems, Accountable Manager and Managing Director, so we’ve both seen SMS from very different sides of the organisation. Luke also runs his own consultancy business too, so there should be plenty of real-world examples, including things we’d both do very differently if we were starting again today. We’ll get into things like: Where do you actually start? What genuinely needs to exist from day one? What can wait? How much SMS does an operator really need? What tends to get overcomplicated? How do you stop Safety becoming the owner of everyone else’s risk? What does useful reporting and risk management actually look like? When do SPIs, meetings and formal processes start adding value rather than just creating work? How do you build something that can grow with the operation without having to rip it apart every two years? This is NOT be an hour of us reading regulations back at each other. If you work in aviation Safety, Compliance or management systems, particularly if you’re building, fixing or trying to simplify an SMS, this one is for you.