Exploiting data from safety investigations and processes to assess performance of safety management aspects

This paper presents an alternative way to use records from safety investigations as a means to support the evaluation of safety management (SM) aspects. Datasets from safety investigation reports and progress records of an aviation organization were analyzed with the scope of assessing safety management’s role, speed of safety communication, timeliness of safety investigation processes and realization of safety recommendations, and the extent of convergence among SM and investigation teams. The results suggested an interfering role of the safety department, severe delays in safety investigations, timely implementation of recommendations, quick dissemination of investigation reports to the end-users, and a low ratio of investigation team recommendations included in the final safety investigation reports. The results were attributed to non-scalable safety investigation procedures, ineffective resource management, lack of consistent bidirectional communication, lack of investigators’ awareness about the overall organizational context, and a weak commitment of other departments to the realization of safety recommendations. The set of metrics and the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods presented in this paper can support organizations to the transition towards a performance-based evaluation of safety management.