GVHL’s safety philosophy

Recently, DGCA has directed all the operators to implement the Safety Management System as envisaged by the International Civil Aviation Organization and so we asked Capt SS Krishnamurthy (‘Krish’) who has recently taken over as the Chief of Flight Safety of GVHL a few questions on the job in hand.

Question: GVHL has an excellent reputation in terms of safety. GVHL has flown more than 1, 23,000 accident free hours. GVHL has received an award from British Gas, one of its clients, for excellence safety of operations for the year 2008-2009. Helicopter operations are becoming more complex and Safety Management System is an organized and practical method for controlling risks and hazards. You are the one who is going to implement an SMS in GVHL. Can you first tell us more about what is an SMS?

Krish: To start with lets’ understand as to what is Safety. Concept of safety as per the ICAO Doc 9859:

“Safety is the state in which the risk of harm to persons or property damage is reduced to, and maintained at or below, an acceptable level through a continuing process of hazard identification and risk management”

In the field of aviation, where the risks are of very high order, there has to be a systematic prevention of accidents. Hence Safety awareness and Safety implementation are very important and that’s where the SMS come into play. SMS or the Safety Management System is a systematic and comprehensive process for the proactive management of safety risks that integrates the management of operations and technical systems with financial and human resource management.

Question: Let us know about your plan, how to do it?  

Krish The Directorate General of Civil Aviation which is the regulatory authority for the Civil Aviation in India, in a pro-active planning, has adopted the SMS as envisaged by the ICAO, in four phases. We, in GVHL, are already into the third phase. Till now, the name of the accountable executive and the name of the person responsible for implementing the SMS have been announced. A commitment to the implementation of SMS (by the accountable executive) has been made and displayed in the offices of GVHL. We have carried out a gap analysis between the GVHL’s existing system and the SMS regulatory requirements. A manual on SMS has been made.

In the third and fourth phases, the Endeavour would be to train the personnel at various levels, of the organization, on the SMS. Besides hazard identification, assessment of risks and risk mitigation are to be inculcated to one and all as part of being trained on the SMS as adhering and reporting of such matters in the day to day function will be the culmination of the SMS.

Question: What are your objectives? What are your safety goals and the practical method to achieve them?

Krish: The objectives are obvious; to keep the incidents and accidents as low as possible. This would require pro-active action in the form of a process for the identification of hazards and associated methods of collecting, storing and distributing data and a risk management process. To this end we require components like documented safety management plan, documented policies and procedures, a process for reactive occurrence reporting and training and process for proactive identification of hazards.

Question: GVHL already has a safety policy, what else do you want to add?

Krish: There are three distinct requirements and these are to be projected as the company’s policy.

a.State safety programme (SSP) and Acceptable level of safety (ALoS) as defined by the DGCA.

b. Safety management System (SMS) Safety performance of the SMS to be defined by the Company

c.   Management accountability

Question: What is done in term of safety awareness of the clients so that the staff does not get pressurized that could be against the safety rules?

Krish:  Safety is a matter of Knowledge, training, preparation and attitude and hence, to imbibe Safety Awareness, it is necessary to provide everyone what we are discussing and side by side train them on the SMS. Each individual needs to have a right attitude towards safety (and where it is lacking, the training would mend the same). All these would prepare the company as an organization to orientate towards the safer and safer goals.

Part of the training and awareness is not to accept unacceptable goals and missions. Aircrew particularly is oriented towards these adverse pressures.