Argus International has launched a new platform that provides an enhanced suite of safety management system (SMS) tools that can be customized. Building on and replacing its legacy Prism Armor platform, the new Prism SMS will enable organizations to tailor SMS programs to their operations and have real-time access to data to manage risks and assess operations.
Ultimately, Prism SMS will provide for the integration of other software programs such as flight duty scheduling, maintenance tracking, and flight data monitoring, Argus said.
Travis Kuhn, senior v-p of market intelligence for Argus, said Prism SMS is the culmination of work between the company's SMS and development teams over the past few years based on customer input.
About two years ago, Argus began work on replacing the Prism Armor program; that work coincided with the looming SMS regulation changes, Kuhn explained. “We spent several years as a team gathering feedback from the industry,” he said.
Argus initially rolled out the program in August, with plans to showcase the platform this week at NBAA-BACE.
A key tenet in its development is the ability to customize the program, he further said. It was important to make the program scalable to the operator “whether they have one airplane or 500 airplanes,” Kuhn said.
This is key given Part 135 operators and Part 21 holders of all sizes are anticipating a rulemaking that will mandate SMS programs, he added, noting that regulation is expected to be released at “any time.”
While scalable to all sizes of operators, the program “doesn’t stop there,” Kuhn said. “The SMS requirements in aviation are all pretty similar.” The program is designed to be flexible to tailor to “whatever the organization is.”
Built on the four pillars of SMS—safety policy, risk management, assurance, and promotion—the platform enables operators to fully implement a program. “That means you have the ability to store documents in your system. It allows for tracking of your operation,” he said, including running flight risk and ground risk assessments.
And, Kuhn added, “The operator has the ability to track their trends to review and analyze what is happening in their operation.”
The SMS team is continuing to work on further integrations with more tools anticipated to roll out over the next year, he said, noting that there already is an integration for Aviation Safety Action Programs.
While Argus moves to Prism SMS, it is taking steps to wind down Prism Armor, which Kuhn described as a predecessor program but one that is not as scalable and customizable. Thus, Argus is in the process of transferring clients to the SMS platform, in addition to adding new ones, and “the feedback on the system so far has been phenomenal,” he said.
As Argus has transitioned to the new program, inquiries about it have jumped by as many as five or six times over “what would be normal” for its products, it said. But Kuhn also noted that while “we have a brand that was well established within this segment of the industry, you also have this looming [FAA] SMS mandate coming out, which I think is also leading to an influx of inquiries for us.”
Kuhn believes those inquiries, for now, are from the “early adapters” but will grow as the final requirements are released and operators fully understand what to expect with the SMS mandate.