FPTA/CTD Annual Conference October 2015 FTA Bus Safety Oversight Program

FPTA/CTD Annual Conference

October 2015

FTA Bus Safety Oversight Program

• Voluntary program but moving to an oversight role

• Developed in collaboration with industry partners (APTA, CTAA, AASHTO)

• Objective – improve safety for passengers, employees, and all that share roadways with transit buses

• Initial focus on small urban and rural bus transit systems

• Now includes large urban bus transit systems

FTA Bus Safety Program Background

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• Resource website

• Voluntary onsite reviews

• Orientation seminars

• Ongoing outreach

Major Bus Program Elements

Voluntary Onsite

Reviews

State DOT Orientation

Seminars

Bus Safety Program Website

Industry Coordination

and Outreach

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Safety Management Systems (SMS)

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• Make a safe industry even safer• Foster sound safety policy• Develop and share efficient practices for

risk management and safety assurance• Help grow a strong safety culture within

every transit system

What FTA wants…from a safety perspective

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• Accountability is properly placed• Agency-wide reporting and

communication of safety issues• Proactive investigation of hazards• Tools to monitor safety performance• Effective and efficient assurance activities• Balanced decision-making regarding

safety risk within operations and planning

What should change look like?

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• At the transit agency, state and federal levels– What are our most serious safety concerns?– How do we know this?– What are we doing about it?– Is what we are doing working?

…and importantly…how do we know what we are doing is working?

Questions we all need to ask that SMS helps answer

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• Ensures timely information about safety risks so executives can make informed decisions about allocating resources to prioritized risk

• Actively seeks to identify and mitigate hazards so we can prevent accidents and manage change

• Fosters system-wide communication about safety issues up, down and across the agency

• Improves safety culture by empowering employees and involving them in decision-making

What SMS does

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• Two critical safety related concerns that demonstrate the need for SMS are:

– The Organizational Accident – Practical Drift

Critical Concerns

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The Organizational Accident

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• Individual accidents– those resulting from the actions or inactions

of people

• Organizational accidents– those resulting from actions or inactions of

organizations

Two Types of Accidents

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“Organizational accidents have multiple causes involving many people operating at different levels of their respective companies.”

– James Reason, Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents

Organizational Accidents

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Organizational Accidents Involve Active and Latent Factors

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DefensesPeopleWorkplaceOrganization

SafetyBreakdown

Some holes due tolatent conditions

Hazards

Some holes due toactive failures

Identifying and analyzing latent organizational factors that may contribute to accidents and incidents is a critical tool in the transit risk management process.

Organizational Accident and SMS

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“The discovery of human error should be considered the starting point of the investigation, and not the ending point.”

- ISASI Forum

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Practical Drift

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Practical Drift

System and Tasks as designed and engineered

Local Reality

Why? What happened?• Service delivery

pressures• Procedure no longer

practical• Short cuts are more

efficient• Supervisor allows it• Informal processes• Training inadequately

conveyed risk

“Work as imagined”

“Work as actually done”

“Uncoupling of practice from procedure”

Practice

Procedure

Over Time

Imperfect Systems – The Practical Drift

Start of Operations

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Practical Drift

Operational Performance

Baseline Performance

Organization

The difference between “where we are” and “where we thought we were”

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Navigating the Drift – The Need for Data

Individual and organizational safety performance monitoring allows a transit agency to identify if, how, and why practical drift has occurred and assists in assuring safe operations.

Practical Drift and SMS

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SMS Overview

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SMS is the formal, top-down, organization-wide, data-driven approach to managing safety risk and assuring the effectiveness of safety risk mitigations. It includes systematic policies, procedures, and practices for the management of safety risk.

What is SMS?

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1. Safety Management Policy

2. Safety Risk Management

3. Safety Assurance

4. Safety Promotion

SMS Framework Components or Pillars

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How the Pillars Interact

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Safety Management Policy

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Safety Management Policy Pillar and its Subcomponents

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SafetyManagement

Policy

• Establishes necessary organizational structures, roles, and responsibilities

• Ensures safety is addressed with the same priority as other critical organizational functions

• Provides direction for effective: Safety Risk Management Safety Assurance Safety Promotion

• Helps ensure sufficient resources are provided to meet safety objectives

Safety Management

Policy Statement

Safety Accountabilities

& Responsibilities

Integration with Public Safety &

Emergency Management

SMS Documentation

& Records

The Safety Management Policy Subcomponent

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SafetyManagement

Policy

• The safety management policy statement is the charter of an SMS

• It must clearly and succinctly frame the fundamentals upon which the transit agency SMS will operate

• A safety management policy statement may not exceed a page or two

Safety Management

Policy Statement


& Responsibilities



SMS Documentation

& Records

Safety Accountabilities & Responsibilities Subcomponent

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SafetyManagement

Policy

• Safety is not the sole responsibility of the Safety Manager or the Safety Department

• Critical to detail the safety accountabilities and responsibilities for:

Accountable Executive Safety/SMS Manager Managers and supervisors Front line employees

• This is where organizational structure and arrangements are defined

Safety Management

Policy Statement


& Responsibilities



SMS Documentation

& Records

Integration with Public Safety & Emergency Management Subcomponent

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SafetyManagement

Policy

• Ensures integration of programs that have input into, or output from, the SMS

• Identifies and describes the interface with external organizations

• Ensures coordination in plans for dealing with emergencies and abnormal operations and the return to normal operations

Safety Management

Policy Statement


& Responsibilities



SMS Documentation

& Records

SMS Documentation & Records Subcomponent

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SafetyManagement

Policy

• Agency ensures that it formalizes and documents key elements of SMS such as:

Safety management policy statement SMS requirements SMS processes and procedures Accountabilities, responsibilities, and authorities for

processes and procedures

• Documentation is scalable, but must be sufficient to help institutionalize the processes within SMS

Safety Management

Policy Statement


& Responsibilities



SMS Documentation

& Records

Safety Risk Management

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SRM Pillar and its Subcomponents

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• Vital to the success of SMS• Before an SMS can be effectively

built or improved, safety hazards must be identified in your operation and mitigations need to be in place to manage the safety risk

• Safety risk management is a continuous process

Hazard Identification &

Analysis

Safety Risk Evaluation &

Mitigation

SafetyRisk

Management

Hazard Identification & Analysis Subcomponent

Slide 32


Analysis

Safety Risk Evaluation and

Mitigation

SafetyRisk

Management

Hazard Identification & Analysis

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Safety Risk MitigationSafety Risk Evaluation

OperationalSystem

Description

HazardIdentification

HazardAnalysis


State the generic hazard(s)

Identify hazard components

Identify specific consequences

Collect data / info

1

2


• The only way to know your safety risk prior to an accident

• Provides the foundation for your safety risk evaluation activities

• Must be agency-wide and fully supported and promoted

Safety Risk Evaluation & Mitigation Subcomponent

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Safety Risk Evaluation and

Mitigation

SafetyRisk

Management


Analysis

Safety Risk Evaluation Process

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Safety Risk Mitigation

Index safety risk

Evaluate current mitigations

Evaluatethe Safety Risk

Safety Risk Evaluation

Express probability of consequence

Express severity of consequence

3Hazard Identification & Analysis

Safety Risk Evaluation• Provides a way to measure the

potential consequence of identified hazards

• Evaluates how existing defenses could mitigate the consequences

• Helps determine whether certain safety risk is acceptable, while others require risk mitigation

• Data driven - safety resource allocations are more logical Acceptable

level of mitigations?

Safety Risk Mitigation Process

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Safety Risk MitigationSafety Risk EvaluationHazard Identification & Analysis

Safety Risk Mitigation

• Enables us to “manage” our safety risk

• Our aim is to reduce safety risks to an acceptable level

• Provides our course of action to be monitored by Safety Assurance function

Mitigate SafetyRisk

4

Safety Assurance

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Safety Assurance Pillar and its Subcomponents

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Safety performance monitoring & measurement

Managementof

change

Continuous improvement

SafetyAssurance

• A continuous process, constantly interacting with Safety Risk Management

• Where safety performance data is collected and analyzed

• Systematic and ongoing monitoring and recording of an agency’s safety performance

• Helps verify an agency’s safety performance is in line with safety objectives and targets

Safety Performance Monitoring & Measurement Subcomponent

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Managementof

change


SafetyAssurance

Safety management requires feedback on safety performance to complete the safety management cycle

Management of Change Subcomponent

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Managementof

change


SafetyAssurance

Continuous Improvement Subcomponent

Slide 41


Managementof

change

SafetyAssurance


Safety Promotion

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Safety Promotion Pillar and its Subcomponents

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SafetyPromotion

Competencies and Training

Safety Communication

Safety Communication Subcomponent

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SafetyPromotion



• SMS is dependent upon ongoing management commitment to communication

• One of management’s most important responsibilities under SMS is to encourage and motivate others to want to communicate openly, authentically, and without concern for reprisal

Competencies & Training Subcomponent

Slide 45

SafetyPromotion



• Executive management responsibility because of allocation of resources to training

• Safety training development process• Relationship between safety training and

Safety Risk Management and Safety Assurance

Employee Safety Reporting

Slide 46

Slide 47

SMS and Safety Reporting: Facts

• SMS does not work without data• Nobody knows actual system performance

better than the employees delivering the service

• Power of safety reporting– Safety data capture on previously

unanticipated safety deficiencies– Safety data to confirm the effectiveness of

existing safety risk mitigations

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Effective Safety Reporting - Attributes

• Training the messengers– People are not “natural messengers”

• Ease of reporting– Simple requisites

• Timely, accessible, and informative feedback– No feedback; program crumbles

• Protection– Information only used for the purposes it was

collected

• Vehicle for change– Issues reported are solved

FTA SMS Framework

Resources

Training

Events

SMS Information

Blast emails to registered users

FTA’sSafety Training and Resource Website

http://safety.fta.dot.gov/

Slide 49

http://bussafety.fta.dot.gov/

Documents

FPTA/CTD Annual Conference October 2015 FTA Bus Safety Oversight Program