Goodheart believes part of that maturation has been driven by NATA, and part of it has been driven by the arrival of the IS-BAH. “In a few short years, IS-BAH is already doing what it was intended to do, which is to raise, and keep raising that bar,” he added. “I think also, and more impor- tantly, there has been this bigger realization that, when we undertake a better understanding of process at every level—including our safety procedures, but also our approaches to intentional change management, transformational leadership, data collection and sharing and analy- sis, everything—and really focus on making those processes better, we all get better across the board, both in our own companies and in our trade association and across the general aviation industry,” Goodheart said. “What we’ve seen is that, when we begin improving our safety processes, for example, we immediately begin reducing other inefficiencies across our businesses. Then, we can start reducing expensive and even tragic mistakes, and improve communica- tion. By improving how our teams are organized at every level, we just all keep getting better. Now, I think everyone finally sees it and knows it, which is why most people in the industry are embracing these new standards even though they defi- nitely do require some extra work.” The extra work required to develop an SMS and register for and main- tain an audited IS-BAH certification will, by its very nature, translate into measurable and actionable safety data, according to Goodheart. “The way I judge success of my short little talk is if somebody could Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2017 walk away from it with the abil- ity to think of safety data in some other context than the opposite of a negative,” Goodheart said. His company, Versant, is a safety and risk management consulting firm. “I prefer the term advocate to consultant,” Goodheart said. “We put a tremendous amount of time and effort into learning how things look through the lens of the user so we can help them create radically effec- tive tools and processes for safety.” A key part of that process is disabusing his clients of old defini- tions and understandings of “safety,” a message that was also central to his presentation at the symposium. “In the aviation business, we’ve always tended to talk about safety in terms of accident rate, incident rate, injury rate, and equipment damage rate; and, when those rates aren’t high, we like to pat ourselves on the back and say, ‘We’re safe.’ But that’s completely backwards,” Goodheart explained. “We should be measuring safety in terms of the purposeful and positive and preven- tative actions taken to bring those rates down, instead of in terms of just not making mistakes! We have a history of congratulating ourselves for not making mistakes, like that’s something magical, and it just isn’t. With a good SMS, paired with good data reporting and analysis and the careful and consistent curation of a safety culture based on that data and analysis to minimize risk areas to prevent serious incidents, that’s when you can rightfully start to say, ‘We have a strong safety program.’ That’s when the magic happens. It’s in taking care of all those details that constitute a safety program in a truly systematic way. I see IS-BAH as a vehicle for helping us all get to that point when we can eventu- ally proudly refer to it and say we’ve done all of these things to become a stronger, safer, and more resilient operation; and here’s what’s next.” Sunshine McCarthy, Vice President of Business Development & Education at Baldwin Aviation Safety and Compliance, led the sympo- sium’s opening session, SMS... From By improving how our teams are organized at every level, we just all keep getting better. the ‘Ground’ Up. In her icebreaker activity, she projected quotes about Safety Management Systems on the wall and asked everybody to deter- mine where they stood in response to each quote—agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree—then physically get up out of their seats and move around the room based on those responses. She says she wasn’t surprised to find a range of Continued on page 48 47
