SAFE360° is not just a conference where we bring people together to talk about safety and the go home again having drunk lots of coffee and enjoyed meeting up with people you haven't seen for a long time. It performs a key role in the European SRM process, which you can see below.
At the start of the process we have Steps 1 and 2, to identify and then assess safety issues. The purpose of SAFE is to bring the industry together to take the pulse of the industry and make sure that we are worrying about the right things. Then we pick some important topics and discuss them together in a 360° approach that informs the planning for the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS).
This is associated with the routine work on the "Identification of Safety Issues" and "Assessment of Safety Issues" that is done by the Collaborative Analysis Groups (CAGs). There are 4 CAGs that support the safety of the commercial aviation system. These are:
The CAGs have membership from NAAs and industry. Each group has around 25 member organisations and this means that many organisations don't have the chance to take part. Through SAFE360° we can involve lots more people in these safety conversations. It is worth also mentioning that the inputs from the CAGs then feed up to the Commercial Aviation Safety Committee (the CAS.COM) where industry leaders work with EASA to channel the inputs to the EPAS.
You will hopefully remember our Safety Week that we hosted back in June. This was done as part of the Stronger, Safer, Together Campaign. Both the Safety Week and the campaign are the key collaborative activities for the implementation part at Step 4 of the SRM process.
During COVID you probably got used to virtual events. One of the special things about SAFE360° is that we have been able to go back to it being an in-person only event. We use the Chatham House Rules to encourage open and honest conversations about our safety challenges. In person we can manage this properly so that we can talk together safe that we all share the same goal of improving safety.
The goal of Day 1 was to focus on the question of whether we have a shared picture on the top safety issues that the industry is facing at the moment. Specifically, the panel on the EU Safety Landscape provided the chance to share experiences on what we have learned this summer to make sure that we put our efforts in the right place.
In a complex system like aviation, its important that we work together.
Day 2 of SAFE360° then focused more towards detailed discussion on 4 key safety issues. We had four 360° panels covering the following topics:
The results of these discussions and the wider assessment activities lead to specific EPAS actions. More immediately they helped to inform EASA's collaborative Safety Promotion efforts through Together4Safety. This enables us to share useful information with the industry quickly to help you manage risks effectively in your organisation.
In addition to the panels, there were some other interesting parts of SAFE360°. The third and final day of SAFE360° was devoted to Flight Data Monitoring (FDM). Experts from this field shared ideas and best practices that can help you make the most of this important safety resource.
With the continued expansion of the EASA Data4Safety (D4S) project, the organisations involved updated the conference on the progress of this exciting collaborative initiative. Hopefully this will inspire your organisation to be part of the operational phase.
Finally, attendees had the chance to see a number of short flash talks where industry experts spoke about topics like Safety Culture, Integrated Risk Management, Safety Issue Prioritisation, Risk Classification and SMS in Ground Handling.
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