The art of measuring nothing: The paradox of measuring safety in a changing civil aviation industry using traditional safety metrics

Abstract

Measuring safety as an outcome variable within the ultra-safe civil aviation industry during periods of deliberate organizational change is a difficult, and often fruitless, task. Anticipating eroding safety processes, based on measuring nothing happening over time, does not adequately capture the true state of an evolving safe system, and this is particularly relevant for leaders and managers in a civil aviation industry responsible for maintaining and improving ultra-safe performance while simultaneously managing demanding strategic business goals.In this paper, I will look at the difficulties of measuring safety as an outcome measure in high reliability organizations (HROs) using the traditional measures of incident and accident reporting during periods of deliberate organizational change inspired by the results from a three-year longitudinal case study of the Norwegian Air Navigation Services provider -Avinor.I will first review the current safety literature relating to Safety Management Systems (SMSs) used in the civil aviation industry. I will then propose a more holistic model that shifts the focus from the traditional safety monitoring mechanisms of risk analysis and trial and error learning, to the natural interactivity within socio-technical systems as found in High Reliability Organizations.And finally, I will present a summary of the empirical results of an alternate methodology for measuring perceived changes in safety at the operational level as leading indicators of evolving safety at at the organizational level.

Doomed to Fail: A Case Study of Change Implementation Collapse In the Norwegian Civil Aviation Industry

“…This was particularly evident in the public disagreement between the leadership and the air traffic controller union concerning manning levels, but also extended to the disagreements over which air traffic control centers should be shut down, the reasons for these choices and the timing for these closures (Lofquist, 2008(Lofquist, , 2010. This does not necessarily mean that the original plan was flawed, as the planning process seemed adequate and enjoyed early consensus from all parties involved.…”

Dualities and dilemmas: contending with uncertainty in large-scale safety-critical projects

“…There are three possible explanations for this. First, there are greater and more immediate competitive pressures in civil aerospace than in the civil nuclear sector (Lofquist, 2010), which leads to increased schedule and cost pressure on the project team, which in turn can tempt practitioners to supress emerging uncertainties in pursuit of rapid aircraft or assembly development. If progress on a nuclear decommissioning project slows in the UK, there are few alternative suppliers waiting to pounce and so fewer levers which clients can pull to drive progress.…”

Enhancing Safety Risk Management with Quantitative Measures

“…The proactive approach is more robust than historical analysis because even though accidents are rare, safety issues exist in the absence of accidents (8). A comprehensive review performed by Netjasov and Janic covered research on risk and safety modeling in civil aviation, classifying models into the following categories: causal models, collision risk, human factor error, and third-party risk (9).…”

“…The variable construction (CON) is the number of construction notices per year at an airport and is represented as a power function in Equation 8.…”