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| The ES2 conference brought together representatives from ANSPs to share experience to enhance Safety Management Systems (SMS). Photo: Eurocontrol |
[Avionics Today 06-18-2015] Chief executive officers, safety directors and safety managers representing 30 European Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) met in Split, Croatia, earlier this week for the biennial ANSP CEOs’ Safety Conference. The conference centered on “Managing the Boundaries of Operations” in the context of meeting the European Union’s (EU) Performance Scheme key performance indicator of safety and its associated targets for Reference Period 2.
Dragan Bilać, CEO of Croatia Control, opened the conference and emphasized the need for a strong performance management framework on the one hand and reliable safety competence of staff on the other. Croatia Control is working in partnership with several organizations and more recently with the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Deployment Alliance to help deliver “one single, state-of-the-art system which is capable of achieving all the Single European Sky objectives,” Bilać said.
In his keynote opening address, Frank Brenner identified five needs that CEOs need to understand in order to maintain and improve their safety record. There is a need, he explained: for visible operational safety improvements; to understand everyday work, i.e. work as it is really carried out instead of work done as imagined by managers; for better human-systems integration; to improve interconnections within organizations; and to look outside, beyond ANSPs and even beyond the aviation industry.
Network managers also weighed in, with Joe Sultana of Eurocontrol stressing: the Air Traffic Management (ATM) network is a complex system, we must think systematically in all that we do; we work better together than if we tried to work in isolation; building and sustaining partnerships is a fundamental enabler of better system safety; NM is here to provide support and help organizations reach their safety goals on European and local levels; and concluded that there is a need to balance competing priorities without compromising the safety of the whole ATM system.