The document discusses how a safety management system (SMS) can help create and maintain a positive safety culture in organizations. It explains that an SMS establishes a comprehensive management framework through elements like safety policies, risk management, assurance, and training. This framework provides the structure to integrate scattered safety practices, assess risks systematically, regulate safety, and improve skills - thereby forming the basis for a positive, evolving safety culture where protection is prioritized over problem-solving. Regular SMS updates then help sustain this culture as an organization advances.

1. Assignment 1
As the development of human, people pay more and more attention on safety than other
factors. Safety has become an important property that organizations should treat as their
highest priority at the contemporary time. Improving safety will cost more money, but
safety could help organizations get more profit because it could reduce the cost of
employees’ injury and equipment damage, and it could increase the number customers
who were attract by the safety. The employees are also can be seen as the capacity of
organizations and the loss of employees may lead to huge financial loss. In aviation
area, Safety is even more important because even a small accident may cause a huge
loss. In 2000s, there were 61 out of 104 fatal accidents were caused by human factors
and 26 out of 104 fatal accidents were caused by mechanical failure (PlaneCrashInfo,
2014). Therefore, controlling the human errors and maintenance errors could help the
safety of aviation improve much and could make much latent profit. To achieve this
goal, complete management system could make the controlling much easier because
management system could intensify the ability of the organizations’ controlling and
make the controlling systemic. Therefore, safety management system (SMS), which
could make the safety risk controllable, is quite helpful for improving the organizations’
safety and could create positive safety culture. This essay will point out the relationship
between SMS and safety culture, and will claim the reasons why SMS could create and
maintain positive safety culture.
At the very beginning, two questions should be highlight which are “what is safety

2. culture?” and “what is SMS?” The safety culture not just means the safety working
conditions, safety rules, safety equipment and safeguard, it also means that the workers
inside the culture have safety knowledge and safety thinking (The Federal Register /
FIND, 2011). A positive safety culture must have a stable and acceptable safety level
and everyone has the responsibility for the safety (U.S. Department of Defense
Information, 2007). Safety culture was created unprompted in the organizations and
cannot be directly seen at anywhere, but it affect the whole organizations’ safety at any
time. Safety culture could improve the safety much because it could make the safety
become environment and belief. Positive protection is much better than negative
defense. In addition, safety culture’s function is not just safety problems resolving.
More advanced, the safety culture is an active risk protection which has a positive future
view and could prevent latent risks. As all know, protection is better that resolving. The
safety management system (SMS) is a method to control the safety risks under an
acceptable level. The SMS includes 4 components which are safety policy, safety risk
management, safety assurance, safety trainings and communications (CASA, 2012). A
good SMS could help the organizations improve their safety because the safety risk
could be controlled by a systemic management and the SMS could help to create a
safety culture which could improve the organization’s safety by a virtuous circle. This
safety culture is just like operating a library. The safety culture is the whole library, and
the safety rules, hazards protections and safety processes are the books. Without
equipment and management, all of the books will be heaped on the ground irregularly,
and the library could only be described as a book storage. In addition, without SMS,

3. the organization still have safety but, as the irregular books on the ground, the safety
exist dispersedly in the organizations. It is not safe enough because it is hardly to assess
the safety level with the complex safety. Apparently, this dispersed safety cannot be
described as safety culture. The SMS’s job is creating a safety culture just like managing
the books and make it looks like a library and keep the library working correctly. The
following paragraphs will detail the reasons why the SMS could create and maintain a
safety culture for the organizations based on the 4 components claimed before.
Firstly, safety policy and objectives in SMS could help the organizations to create a
safety culture. A complete and systemic management structure is the base for the safety
culture. Individuals only response for their only work and protect the safety risks
depending on their own knowledge and experience. Without a comprehensive
management, safety level can hardly be identified and controlled because different
person has different experience and different safety knowledge. Thus, the safety will
show different levels at different places. The SMS is a complete management system
which could make the safety and risks being controlled, and it could make the risk
response, safety analysis and risk prevent become systemic. On the other hand, the SMS
also include safety documents. The safety level cannot be accurately calculated as
financial data reports do. It needs professional identifications to make the safety clearly
and reliable. As all know, more money spending, more safe it will be, but too more
money spending, less airworthiness will be. Therefore, the safety need to be controlled
at an acceptable region but not against the airworthiness by clearly standards and

4. identifications. Thus, the safety documents which contain safety standards and safety
identifications could make the safety culture more reliable and positive. In addition,
with the safety documents, every situation share same safety standards. It helps the
safety management and assessment become easy. Furthermore, complete safety
documents could make the safety of the organizations more stable. As time goes on,
improvements and changes must be added into the organizations to support the
organizations’ development. Therefore, new risks possible occur when new upgrades
being added. People could analysis these new risks easily reference with complete
safety documents, which make the organizations’ safety level not change much and the
risk analysis will also become efficient. At the same time, the safety of the entire
organizations must be stable even for emergency tasks to achieve positive safety culture
standards. The SMS could achieve this goal because it has emergency response plan
and process which could help the organizations handle the emergency events smoothly.
To sum up, the safety policy and objectives of SMS could form a base for safety culture.
The safety policy and objectives of SMS in safety culture could be treat as the shelves
in the library. The shelves are the basic equipment for the library and they decide how
the library will look like and the load of the library. It makes the creation of safety
culture become possible. Therefore, the SMS could build the basis of the safety
environment and belief of the organization, and then create the structure of the safety
culture.
Secondly, safety risk management is an important constituent part of safety culture and

5. continuing risk management could maintain the safety culture to keep it healthy. The
safety documents make identifications and standards, and risk management will
practical use the documents for safety analyzing. The safety risk management’s job are
collecting, analyzing and exchanging data. (CASA, 2012) With a huge number of
individual responses and professional analysis, the latent risks are more easily to be
found out. Finding out latent risks could efficaciously reduce the loss of people’s injury
and equipment damaging because the risks could be prevented before they happen. Also,
the possibility of same mistakes happening will reduce prominently because all of the
fundamental reasons cause the mistakes could be found by SMS. In addition, the safety
risk assessment and risk tolerability for the latent risks could be worked out before they
happen, and suitable protection methods could be made to increase the safety. It could
help to create positive safety culture because it could prevent latent risks with suitable
approach before they happen. As claimed before, protection rather than resolving is an
important property of safety culture. At the same time, SMS risk management could
complete the hazards identification tasks. Clear information is also quite necessary for
safety culture because it could reduce the misunderstandings much. A professional and
standard identification could improve the hazards prevention by reducing
misunderstandings. People could realize hazards correctly with clear identifications. It
could help the safety culture improve because everyone could easily and correctly
understand any hazards found by other people. ( The Federal Register / FIND, 2010)
Every person in the safety culture could share hazard information without any block.
On the other hand, safety risk management could also maintain the safety culture in the

6. continue operations. Every improvements and changes in the organizations may lead to
many new risks occur as claimed before. Therefore, continuing safety risk management
could keep the safety culture function well and improving safely. To sum up, the SMS
risk management manages and controls the risks by reducing hazards according safety
rules. Thus, the risk management’s job is adding safety by creating new safety rules just
as adding new books into the library. As claimed before, safety policy and objectives
form the basic structure. However it just builds empty shelves for placing basic books
which scatter on the ground in the library. More advanced and latent books should be
found out and added to the shelves to complete the library’s function. Therefore, the
risk management could enrich the safety culture and keep improving the safety culture.
Thirdly, safety assurance could ensure the safety culture function at an acceptable level
at any time. Safety must content the airworthiness. Too less money cannot reach the
safety standards, but too much money against financial cannot get a continuing positive
safety culture. Safety is not a short term question, it should be kept at an acceptable
level. The SMS could achieve the goal to keep positive safety culture by balancing the
safety and finance. On the other hand, safety regulation in SMS is also important
constituent part for positive safety culture. People cannot 100 percent sure that they
made no mistakes for the tasks have been finished and the systems also cannot 100
percent sure that they function without any mistake. Therefore, an approved, reliable
and independent regulator with approved regulation standards could defense most of
the mistakes. Also, the safety culture need regulator to ensure everything is under

7. control and function well. Thus, the SMS plays an important role in maintaining safety
culture by operating regulations. ( The Federal Register / FIND, 2010) In addition, the
organizations also need to regulate whether everything is under safety standards,
especially after changes and improvements. For getting more profits, some parts of the
organizations may reduce the safety level. However, the safety should be ensured still
above the safety standards after the decrease. Therefore, the independent regulator in
SMS, which regulate the system function well and measure the safety at any time, could
help objectively to maintain the SMS and safety culture. On the other hand, another
important property of safety culture is having a positive developing future. Same as
other systems, SMS also need changes and improvements. SMS cannot make perfect
documents, rules and processes at the very beginning. Thus, changes will occur after
receiving feedbacks from employees. In addition, the SMS also need to improve as the
organization improving. However, any changes or improvements possible lead to new
risks occur. Therefore, the changes and improvements cannot be made unceremoniously.
At this time, the SMS safety assurance could manage the changes and improvements
and ensure the safety is still acceptable after the changes and improvements. Therefore,
the SMS safety assurance could help the safety improve safely which also support that
the SMS could maintain and improve the safety culture positively as the improvements
of SMS. To sum up, the safety assurance could maintain the safety culture by regulating
the SMS function well and improving the safety positively by managing the changes
and improvements of the SMS. It is same as the operation system in the library. The
books’ integrity, the strength of the shelves and other service systems, such as lighting

8. system and air-condition system, need to be regulated to ensure the whole library
function well. In addition, as time goes on, the shelves and books will become old and
need to be repaired or replaced to keep the integrality of the library. Therefore, the
safety assurance could help the organizations reach the positive safety culture standards
by keep improving with safety.
Finally, safety training could improve managers and employees’ skills and safety
knowledge. The mainly part for positive safety culture is the humans inside the cultures.
Cultures cannot exist individually without humans. Any management system or
operating process need humans to keep it working and the mainly determinant factor
for the property of the cultures is human, as well. If all of the employees inside the
organizations have good knowledge on safety, the safety could be increased much. With
safety knowledge, people will realize how to keep them safe during the work even for
the emergency events. The positive safety culture will be created automatically by the
knowledgeable employees. In addition, the workers at the bottom level are the direct
tasks finishers, so that they are more clearly about the situation surrounded. If these
people have a good knowledge of safety, it is much easier to find out latent risks.
Furthermore, safety-knowledgeable people could also give good-quality feedbacks
about SMS rules, process, documents, changes and improvements. It could make
perfecting roles, processes and documents cost much less time. Therefore, well-
educated employees and smooth communications between managers and employees
that managed by SMS could also lead to a positive safety culture. At the same time,

9. safety training could also help the employees build safety characters in their minds.
They will think about safety actively. Every person will make thinking safety before
acting as their habit, which is a significant important property for positive safety culture.
For example, when engineers are standing above the wings and repairing upside of the
wings, the engineers inside safety culture will think about working safety firstly. They
will found they are standing at such a high level and must get hurt if they fall to the
ground. Then, they will realize they need safety ropes to stop them falling down.
Therefore, a positive safety culture can be fully formed if every person keeps safety in
mind. In addition, more advanced skill trainings could help the employees get more
professional knowledge. Thus, they will understand the equipment and rules that they
are working with more clearly and make fewer mistakes during work which could also
improve the safety and safety culture. Furthermore, continuing training could also
improve the safety culture by supporting a virtuous circle. People could get the newest
knowledge about their work which could support them to use the more high-tech and
reliable equipment and tools safely. In addition, people could also get the newest safety
knowledge that could protect themselves during the work. To sum up, the safety
trainings and communications could help the safety increasing fundamentally and could
create and maintain the safety culture by improving the determinant factor for the
property of the cultures. It is just like educate the people live in the library. Increasing
people’s reading skills and professional knowledge make people could understand the
books in the library more clearly, and get the ability to use the tools in the library. At
the same time, these educated people could even write new books for the library with

10. their advanced knowledge. In addition, communicating with readers, the library could
get the feedbacks about whether the books were put at the correct place and whether
the books were written correctly. Thus, the library could improve much by the people’s
improvement. Therefore, the trainings and communications are the direct approach to
improve the safety culture.
In conclusion, the SMS could be treat as the leadership of the organizations that manage
the whole organizations’ safety. With leaderships, the safety of the organizations
become more reliable because it already becomes a complete system not individual
tasks. (Bowie, 2010) The SMS integrate the safety that scatter in the entire
organizations into a safety system just as collecting and placing books together to create
a library. After that, a positive safety culture could be created by SMS and it will be
continuing maintained by SMS as SMS improving.
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