A safety management system (SMS) provides a systematic way to identify hazards, control risks, and ensure risk controls are effective. It involves setting safety goals, planning, and measuring performance as part of an organization's culture. The key components of an SMS include a safety policy, organizing roles and responsibilities, planning and implementing risk controls, evaluating performance, and continually improving the system. Regulators in various industries have developed SMS standards tailored to their needs in order to help organizations meet and exceed legal safety obligations.

1. Safety management systems
A SMS provides a systematic way to identify hazards and control risks while maintaining assurance that
these risk controls are effective. SMS can be defined as:
...a businesslike approach to safety. It is a systematic, explicit and comprehensive process for managing
safety risks. As with all management systems, a safety management system provides for goal setting,
planning, and measuring performance. A safety management system is woven into the fabric of an
organization. It becomes part of the culture, the way people do their jobs.
For the purposes of defining safety management, safety can be defined as:
... The reduction of risk to a level that is as low as is reasonably practicable.
There are three imperatives for adopting a safety management system for a business – these are ethical,
legal and financial.
There is an implied moral obligation placed on an employer to ensure that work activities and the place
of work to be safe, there are legislative requirements defined in just about every jurisdiction on how this
is to be achieved and there is a substantial body of research which shows that effective safety
management (which is the reduction of risk in the workplace) can reduce the financial exposure of an
organization by reducing direct and indirect costs associated with accident and incidents.
To address these three important elements, an effective SMS should:
Define how the organization is set up to manage risk.
Identify workplace risk and implement suitable controls.
Implement effective communications across all levels of the organization.
Implement a process to identify and correct non-conformities.
Implement a continual improvement process.
A safety management system can be created to fit any business type and/or industry sector.
Basic safety-management components
International Labour Organization SMS model
Since there are many models to choose from to outline the basic components of a safety management
system, the one chosen here is the international standard promoted by the International Labour
Organisation (ILO). In the ILO document ILO-OSH 2001 Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health
Management Systems, the safety management basic components are:
Policy
Organizing
Planning and implementation
Evaluation
Action for improvement

2. Although other SMS models use different terminology, the process and workflow for safety
management systems is always the same;
1. Policy – Establish within policy statements what the requirements are for the organisation in
terms of resources, defining management commitment and defining OSH targets
2. Organizing – How is the organisation structured, where are responsibilities and accountabilities
defined, who reports to who and who is responsible for what.
3. Planning and Implementation – What legislation and standards apply to our organisation, what
OSH objectives are defined and how are these reviews, hazard prevention and the assessment
and management of risk.
4. Evaluation – How is OSH performance measured and assessed, what are the processes for the
reporting of accidents and incidents and for the investigation of accidents and what internal
and external audit processes are in place to review the system.
5. Action for Improvement – How are preventative and corrective actions managed and what
processes are in place to ensure the continual improvement process. There is a significant
amount of detail within each of these sections and these should be examined in detail from the
ILO-OSH Guidelines document.
Regulatory Perspective[edit]
SMS Implications[edit]
A SMS is intended to act as a framework to allow an organisation, as a minimum, to meet its legal
obligations under occupational health and safety law. The structure of a SMS is generally speaking, not
of itself a legal requirement but it is an extremely effective tool to organise the myriad aspects of
occupational safety and health (OSH) that can exist within an organisation, often to meet standards
which exceed the minimum legal requirement.
A SMS is only as good as its implementation – effective safety management means that organisations
need to ensure they are looking at all the risks within the organization as a single system, rather than
having multiple, competing, ‘Safety Management Silos.’[3]
If safety is not seen holistically, it can interfere
with the prioritization of improvements or even result in safety issues being missed. For example, after
an explosion in March 2005 at BP's Texas City Refinery (BP) the investigation concluded that the
company had put too much emphasis on personal safety thus ignoring the safety of their
processes.[4]
The antidote to such silo thinking is the proper evaluation of all risks, a key aspect of an
effective SMS.[5]
Implementation[edit]
Adoption of SMSs for Industry Sectors[edit]
There are a number of industry sectors worldwide which have recognised the benefits of effective safety
management. The regulatory authorities for these industries have developed safety management
systems specific to their own industries and requirements, often backed up by regulation. Below are
examples from different industry sectors from a number of varied worldwide locations.
Civil Aviation[edit]
The International Civil Aviation Organization has recommended that all aviation authorities implement
SMS regulatory structures.[6]
ICAO has provided resources to assist with implementation, including
the ICAO Safety Management Manual. Unlike the traditional occupational safety focus of SMS, the ICAO
focus is to use SMS for managing aviation safety. Id.

3. The United States has introduced SMS for airports through an advisory circular[7]
and other guidance.[8]
The United States announced at the 2008 EASA/FAA/TC International Safety Conference that they would
be developing regulations to implement SMS for repair stations, air carriers, and manufacturers. The
FAA formed a rulemaking committee to address the implementation (known as the SMS ARC).[9]
The
SMS ARC reported its findings to the FAA on March 31, 2010. The Report recognizes that many of the
elements of SMS already exist in the U.S. regulations, but that some elements do not yet exist.[10]
A draft
of what the US SMS rule might look like was proposed by one trade association that participated in the
ARC.[11]
Currently, the FAA is supporting voluntary pilot projects for SMS.[12]
The Federal Aviation Administration has also required that all FAA services and offices adopt a common
Aviation Safety (AVS)Safety Management System (AVSSMS).[13]
This is what ICAO calls a State Safety
Program (SSP). An overview of the FAA approach to SMS may be found in the following PDF
document.[14]
The Federal Aviation Administration published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the
establishment of SMS for air carriers.[15]
That NPRM explains that it is intended to serve as the
foundation for rules that would later be applied to Part 135 operators, Part 145 repair stations and Part
21 manufacturers. Id. Several U.S. trade associations filed comments in response to the air carrier
NPRM, including ASA[disambiguation needed][16]
and MARPA.[17]
Among these comments were arguments for
developing separate SMS regulations for other certificate holders, in order to make sure that SM
remains a usable tool for advancing safety (rather than a uniform but useless paperwork exercise). In
addition, the Federal Aviation Administration has also filed a NPRM for SMS for airports,[18]
which would
be separate from the rules for SMS for air carriers (consistent with the arguments of the trade
associations).
The European Aviation Safety Administration (EASA) began the process of implementing Safety
Management System (SMS) regulations by issuing Terms of Reference (TOR) on July 18, 2011.[19]
That
was followed by a Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) issued on January 21, 2013.[20]
The proposed
EASA regulation would apply to repair stations,[21]
but would have significant ancillary effects on other
aviation industry sub-sectors.[22]