Making your Risk Assessment Tool a STAR – SM4 Safety News from Global…

Mention the acronym GUMPS to just about any fixed wing pilot and watch their eyes move upward and to the right. Their neurolinguistics are probably showing you they are visually remembering: gas, undercarriage, mixture, props and safety. It is a tried-and-true mental checklist and litany that has served, and saved, many a pilot.

While implementing new safety management systems in all types of organizations, I’ve continued to look for GUMP-style acronyms and checklists that help operators integrate SMS principles in their work processes and influence behaviors that promote a proactive safety culture. Getting people to accurately risk assess tasks, plans or procedures is not as easy as it sounds. Make the assessment tool criteria too complex, restrictive or incomplete, and people may attempt to game, minimize or avoid its results. Make the assessment too simplistic or unrealistic, and the decision tool data becomes meaningless.

Since meaningful form names help users integrate their function, I always ask front-line employees what they call, or wish to name, their SMS risk assessment tool. As rewarding as it is to hear some say, “We do a Baldwin,” the name may not create the right mindset nor set the tone for what is at stake. While implementing an SMS for a large aircraft maintenance supplier, I went as far as offering steak dinners to their technicians if they could rename their risk assessment tool something other than “The RAT.”

A Memorable and Meaningful Risk Tool...