SMS Made Simpler

Keeping up with the requirements of a safety management system (SMS) can be extraordinarily complex. The IS-BAO protocol requirements alone number more than 500, and each year many of them change or are added or removed. To help keep track of these requirements, aviation consultant and former corporate pilot Phil Fountain of Fountain and Associates has developed the iIS-BAO application, which runs on the FileMaker database program on Windows PC and Apple Macintosh computers or in the FileMaker Go app on the iPad.

The goal of iIS-BAO, said Fountain, “is to get everybody on an SMS on the same page.” Operators can use iIS-BAO to develop their SMS, while SMS service providers can use it to help their customer-operators develop SMS manuals. SMS auditors can use the program to update their auditing systems and to conduct audits.

IS-BAO (International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations) was developed by the International Business Aviation Council (IBAC), “which represents, promotes and protects the interests of business aviation in international policy and regulatory forums,” including to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

Certainly any operator can participate in the IS-BAO process, which delineates best practices for business aircraft operators and includes the SMS; the IBAC website provides plenty of information on getting started with IS-BAO, meeting the requirements and planning for and obtaining audits.

Simplifying Procedures

A key part of participating in IS-BAO is a gap analysis, which compares the operators’ processes with the IS-BAO requirements. Fountain’s program simplifies the process of cross-referencing the company manual with protocol requirements. Fountain, who also does IS-BAO audits, prefers to ask his clients to do their own cross-reference. Not only do the clients know their own manuals better than he does, but it also makes auditing more efficient, because he can view the cross-reference before traveling to the clients’ operation for the audit.

“Now IBAC is requiring cross-referencing in all its audits,” he said. “I’ve included a place [in the iIS-BAO program] for operators to cross-reference each of their requirements to the manual. They can export it to an Excel file and email it to the auditor. The auditor can [input] all his questions and comments…and when he gets into the audit he can have all his questions prepared.”

Digging deeper into iIS-BAO, the flight department and auditor using the program can pose questions to anyone in the operation on any of the more than 500 requirements. (These include helicopter-applicable requirements, which the user can exclude for a fixed-wing operation.) Each requirement could have questions for various groups such as records, executive, director of operations, safety officer, pilots, flight attendants, technicians, scheduling and so on. Tabs for each protocol requirement provide quick access to applicable supporting documents, including IS-BAO documents, regulations, advisory circulars, terms and acronyms, and so on, which can save the user much time otherwise spent looking up these items elsewhere. While most of the tabbed information is provided by IBAC and regulatory authorities, a “related” tab “provides valuable information, outside IBAC and the regulating agencies,” according to Fountain. “It’s not that IBAC doesn’t have good information. But this application provides a means for presenting more specific information relating to each protocol requirement. This process will make it easier for users to understand the intent.”

iIS-BAO costs $395 for the iPad version or $495 for the PC or Mac version (more expensive because of licensing fees for FileMaker). Fountain explained that the upcoming year’s protocol requirements usually aren’t released until January, but he hopes that for 2015 they will be released a little earlier so he can have iIS-BAO available before year-end.

An operator can use iIS-BAO as much as necessary, either on a progressive or, say, quarterly audit basis and pay only per device. That way, the number of device licenses purchased can be tailored to the size of the flight operation. Because the protocol requirements change each year, it would make sense for users to buy a new version each year.

A service provider such as a company that helps operators write manuals and safety documents can use iIS-BAO to help the operator complete an internal audit. But the service provider would have to pay a separate license fee for each such use. The service provider can’t submit an internal audit that he helped create to IBAC, because this would be a conflict of interest, Fountain explained. A service provider usually is the entity that helps the operator write manuals and so on, for the operation, and it wouldn’t make sense for a service provider to audit what is essentially his own work.

The internal audit is watermarked to prevent anyone from submitting it for an audit. When the independent auditor does the formal audit, this one is submitted to IBAC. These audits are submitted in Adobe PDF format.

The iIS-BAO program is currently designed for U.S. regulations, but Fountain is hoping to add UK regulations at some point.

What Fountain is trying to accomplish with iIS-BAO, he said, “is to educate people and keep them on the same page. You’re not trying to surprise people or trying to trick them. I found out doing audits that getting organized for them is very frustrating and the quality of audits is not where you want them. This saves everybody’s time.”

One company that helped beta test iIS-BAO assigned elements of the SMS to various people in the flight department, and they each did the gap analysis in their speciality then “audited” each others’ work. “This takes a load off the safety officer,” he said. “The more people take ownership of it, the more successful your SMS.”