What is Safety Management Systems (SMS)?
A Safety Management System (SMS) is a structured, organization-wide approach to managing safety risks and ensuring effective safety practices across various industries. It encompasses policies, procedures, and practices designed to identify hazards, assess risks, and implement controls to enhance safety performance. SMS aims to foster a culture of safety, improve decision-making, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
Our mission at SEA is to provide a systematic way to identify hazards and proactively control risk in and around the operation.
Key Components of SMS
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Safety Policy: Establishes the organization's commitment to safety and outlines the objectives and responsibilities related to safety management.
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Risk Management: Involves identifying potential hazards, assessing risks, and implementing measures to mitigate those risks. This process is crucial for proactive safety management.
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Safety Assurance: Ensures that safety policies and procedures are effective and identifies areas for improvement. This includes monitoring safety performance and compliance with safety standards.
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Safety Promotion: Focuses on creating a positive safety culture through training, communication, and engagement of all employees in safety practices.
What do we do?
The SMS team manages safety compliance on the airfield including development of audits and accountability programs to keep the Port and its business partners safe.
Safety management seeks to identify and proactively mitigate safety risks and systemic factors before they result in accidents and incidents to manage safety activities in a disciplined, holistic, integrative and focused manner in order to prioritize actions to address safety risks and more effectively manage its resources for the optimal benefit of safety.
It is the goal of SMS to create a positive safety culture where participants continually challenge the processes, the culture and the systems to identify weaknesses and where improvements can be made.
SMS emphasize safety management as a fundamental business process to be considered in the same manner as other aspects of business management by recognizing the organization's role in accident prevention, SMS provides:
- A structured means of safety risk management decision making
- A means of demonstrating safety management capability before system failures occur
- Increased confidence in risk controls though structured safety assurance processes
- An effective interface for knowledge sharing between regulator and certificate holder
- A safety promotion framework to support a sound safety culture
Weekly SMS Dashboard
Our Team
Adam Varo, ACE, Aviation Safety Quality Assurance Manager
Alicia Waterton, ACE, Safety Management Systems Program Manager
David Crowner, A.A.E. Asst. Director, Operational Risk and Safety
Robert Whitlinger, ACE, Safety Management Systems Risk Manager
Help us keep Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) safe, secure, and clean by directly reporting safety, security and maintenance concerns to the airport.
If you experience anything that makes you feel unsafe or requires emergency assistance, please call or text 9-1-1 to be connected to the Port of Seattle Police Department (POSPD). For non-emergencies please call (206) 787-3490.
