Safety Management

Safety managers are need throughout the aviation industry to help promote a safe work environment and help keep the company in compliance with OSHA, the EPA and ISO compliant, and they keep up with developing trends and practices.

One of the big things a safety manager needs is to have direct reporting access to the CEO of the company or the accountability manager. He must also maintain the respect of all levels of management within the company in order to implement and execute the objectives and goals of their safety program. Another aspect of a good safety program is that the employees also have to be held accountable for their actions and the front line supervisors and middle managers have to enforce the program by making sure there workers abide by the rules and regulations.
Some of the responsibilities of a safety manager are they have to manage the safety plan, (that’s pretty obvious), hazard management and risk assessment, advise management on safety matters, they are responsible for emergency response plans, they train the staff in safety, control company safety documents, and they do investigations on incidents and accidents. They also deal with the human factors and the potential problems that will occur.

When you talk about safety, you can hear the grumblings of the group but it is unavoidable aspect of the business if you will. If you have been in the military for more than a minute, you know what I am talking about, safety stand down days. Mandatory safety briefing throughout the day sometimes even multiple days. Most of the guy's in the crowd are thinking of beer thirty during the whole thing, others are thinking of the girl there going to call for a date later that day, almost everyone is wishing they were somewhere else at that moment. There boring and nobody’s paying attention to whoever is speaking unless he utters the words time to go or you’re released.

However, without the safety managers of yesterday and today where would we be in the aviation world today? Still flying by firelight or people with flashlights on the runway. I would say that while we might groan and moan about safety, it has helped people in aviation and the aviation world as a whole.