Safety Performance Indicators: A Tool for Improving Aerospace Safety
Safety Performance Indicators: A Tool for Improving Aerospace Safety
Navigating the Benefits and Challenges of Implementing Safety Performance Indicators in the Aerospace Industry.
Why are SPIs important?
Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) are an essential tool for organizations in the aerospace industry to measure and evaluate their safety performance. They provide a clear and quantifiable way to track progress towards safety goals, identify areas for improvement, and evaluate the effectiveness of safety programs and interventions.
The use of Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) in the aerospace industry provides several benefits, including:
Improved safety: By monitoring and tracking SPIs, organizations in the aerospace industry can identify areas for improvement and work to reduce the risk of accidents or incidents.
Compliance: Regulatory bodies such as the FAA and EASA require the use of SPIs to monitor the safety performance of airlines and other organizations under their jurisdiction. Using SPIs helps organizations comply with these regulations.
Data-driven decision-making: SPIs provide organizations with clear and quantifiable data that can be used to make informed decisions about safety programs and interventions.
Cost savings: By identifying and addressing safety issues early on, organizations can avoid costly accidents and incidents.
Continuous improvement: Regularly monitoring and tracking SPIs can help organizations identify trends and patterns, enabling them to make continuous improvements to their safety performance over time.
Benchmarking: Using industry-wide SPIs allows organizations to compare their performance against their peers and identify opportunities for improvement.
Transparency: By publicly reporting their SPIs, organizations can demonstrate their commitment to safety and improve public trust.
Types of SPIs
The selection of appropriate SPIs is crucial for organizations to effectively monitor their safety performance to identify potential problems and take action to improve safety in their maintenance process.
Furthermore, it's important to note that the selection of appropriate SPIs can vary depending on the specific area of the aerospace industry, such as commercial airlines, military operations, or aircraft manufacturing. Each area may have different safety risks and priorities, and therefore may require different SPIs to effectively monitor and improve safety.
Main types are:
Frequency-based indicators: measure the number of incidents or events that occur within a specific period of time, such as the number of accidents or incidents per million flight hours or working hours.
Example: Number of accidents or incidents per million flight hours
Severity-based indicators: measure the severity of incidents or events, such as the number of injuries or fatalities per million flight hours.
Example: Number of injuries or fatalities per million flight hours
Leading indicators: measure specific aspects of an organization's safety management system, such as the number of safety audits or inspections conducted.
Example: Number of safety audits or inspections conducted
Lagging indicators: measure the outcome of an organization's safety management system, such as the number of accidents or incidents that occur.
Example: Number of accidents or incidents that occur
Process indicators: measure the performance of specific processes or procedures within an organization, such as the number of maintenance-related incidents per million flight hours.
Number of maintenance-related incidents per million flight hours
What makes a good SPI?
A good Safety Performance Indicator (SPI) should provide a clear and accurate picture of an organisation, process or system and help to drive continuous improvement in safety outcomes. Main attributes of a good SPI are:
Challenges of using SPIs
Some challenges of using Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) in the aerospace industry include:
Data collection and accuracy: Collecting accurate data for SPIs can be difficult, especially for rare events such as accidents or incidents. This can lead to uncertainty in the results and make it difficult to identify trends or patterns.
Determining the appropriate indicators: There are many different SPIs that can be used in the aerospace industry, and choosing the right ones depends on the specific goals and objectives of the organization.
Interpreting the results: Understanding the meaning and significance of the results from SPIs can be difficult, and requires knowledge and expertise in both data analysis and the aerospace industry.
Balancing competing priorities: Organizations in the aerospace industry may have multiple goals and objectives, and it can be challenging to balance these with the need to focus on safety performance.
Continual improvement: Safety performance is a continuous process, and keeping up with the latest industry standards and regulations can be challenging, and requires ongoing effort and attention.
Role of the Regulatory Bodies:
Regulatory bodies such as the FAA, EASA or the UK CAA play a crucial role in ensuring the safety performance of the aerospace industry by mandating the use of SPIs to monitor the safety performance of airlines and other organizations under their jurisdiction. This allows regulatory bodies to identify safety issues and take appropriate action to improve safety in the industry.
I recommend the following references to further develop SPIs within the organisation, which include guidelines and examples of templates:
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
ICAO - Indicator catalogue
ICAO - Indicator form
UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)
The relation between SPIs and business KPIs
Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) and business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are both metrics used to measure the performance of an organization, however SPIs focus on safety performance specifically and are commonly used in industries where safety is a critical concern, such as the aerospace industry, while KPIs focus on broader aspects of organizational performance, such as financial performance, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency. Organizations use both of them together to get a comprehensive view of their performance and identify areas for improvement.
Conclusions
Relevant Safety Performance Indicators need to be designed to provide relevant data at the right organisational level. The organisation needs to put effort to evidence how Safety is helping operations to be more effective and to achieve the business strategy.
The fact that just after an aircraft accident customers stop buying tickets provides evidence that safety and profitability are linked. History suggests that some inexpensive interventions could have prevented some of the larger and well publicised aviation accidents. But what about day-to-day small events and error hazard reports? These are likely to negatively impact performance, productivity or incur financial losses.