Safety management systems and safety culture in aircraft maintenance organisations

Safety management systems and safety culture in aircraft maintenance organisations

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Safety management systems and safety culture in aircraft maintenance organisations*1





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N. McDonald, S. Corrigan, C. Daly and S. Cromie

Department of Psychology, Aerospace Psychology Research Group, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland


Available online 25 May 2000.

Abstract
A self-regulatory model was proposed to examine how different organisations manage safety, with particular emphasis on the human and organisational aspects. The relationships of different aspects of safety culture and safety management systems were explored through the deployment of different research measures and methods. Studies of four aircraft maintenance organisations included analysis of documentation and qualitative interviews, surveys of safety climate and attitudes, expected response to incidents and compliance with task procedures. The model was effective in analysing the salient features of each organisation' s safety management system, though it underestimated the roles of planning and change. The data from management interviews, the incidents survey and safety climate survey exhibited a large measure of agreement in differentiating between the different safety management systems and safety climate of the four organisations. The measures of compliance with task procedures and safety attitudes did not differentiate between the four organisations (though one organisation did differ from the others in safety attitudes). This suggests a strong, relatively homogeneous professional sub-culture of aircraft technicians spanning the different organisations. Differences in safety attitudes and climate were found between occupational groups, though in the case of climate the differences between occupational groups were a function of the organisation, suggesting a differentiated notion of safety culture. The professional sub-culture of technicians is likely to mediate between the organisation' s safety management system and safety outcomes.

Author Keywords: Safety management systems; Safety culture; Aircraft maintenance organisations

Article Outline
1. Introduction
1.1. Relationship between safety management systems and safety culture
1.2. Human factors and safety in aircraft maintenance and the present study
2. Methodology
2.1. Documentation
2.2. Interviews
2.3. Attitude, climate and incident survey
2.3.1. Survey design
2.3.2. Survey participants
2.4. Survey of compliance with task procedures
2.4.1. Survey design
2.4.2. Survey participants
3. Results
3.1. Management interviews and company documentation
3.1.1. Policy and standards
3.1.2. Organisation and planning of work
3.1.3. Monitoring
3.1.4. Feedback and change
3.2. Human factors ‘bottlenecks’ survey
3.3. Safety climate survey
3.4. Safety attitude survey
3.5. Incident survey
3.6. Task procedure survey
4. Discussion
4.1. The safety management system model
4.2. Differentiation of organisational safety systems
4.3. Safety cultures and sub-cultures
5. Summary and conclusion
References





Fig. 1. Safety management system model overview.


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Fig. 2. Mean safety climate score and standard deviations for each organisation.


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Fig. 3. Mean safety climate scores and standard deviations for each job type.


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Fig. 4. Mean safety attitude scores and standard deviations for each organisation.


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Fig. 5. Mean safety attitudes by job type.


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Fig. 6. Consequences of incident scenarios by organisation.


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Fig. 7. Percentage of respondents in each organisation who selected each information source.


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Fig. 8. Revised safety management system model.


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Table 1. Breakdown of respondents to the survey by occupation and company



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Table 2. Summary of elements of safety management systems in the four organisations



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Table 3. Reported percentage violations of task procedures by organisation



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*1 The work reported here was undertaken as part of the ADAMS project — Human Factors In Aircraft Dispatch and Maintenance Safety — which was undertaken within the European Commission programme for Industrial Materials and Technology (Brite EuRam III), with a financial contribution from the European Commission Directorate General for Science, Research and Development.

Corresponding author

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