Safety Management Systems helping transit agencies, state DOTs keep customers safe
On Sept. 18, the Transportation Safety Institute hosted a webinar that featured Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) Chief Safety Officer Timothy Tyran explaining the important role Safety Management Systems (SMS) play in transit agencies and state departments of transportation (DOTs) keeping customers safe. The webinar came on the heels of See Tracks? Think Train® Week, which took place from Sept. 15 through Sept. 21.
What is SMS?
Tyran explained SMS is a structured approach to managing safety risks in the workplace, which includes policies, procedures, training, audits and continuous improvement. SMS has four components, with the goal being to proactively identify and mitigate risks before they become incidents.
The four components are:
- Safety policy
- Safety risk management
- Safety assurance
- Safety promotion
“SMS is about making safety a non-negotiable priority... safety is the process of people reaching out for one another,” Tyran said.
Compliance vs. effectiveness
According to Tyran, to have a successful SMS, the SMS must not just be compliant with regulations, it has to be effective. Tyran notes that “compliance ensures the standard is met while effectiveness asks, ‘Did our actions actually reduce risk?’”
Tyran goes on to say that “compliance is the floor. It’s not the ceiling... focusing on compliance is like driving only in the rearview mirror.”
Cap doom loop
Tyran says SMS is often caught in a cap doom loop, which is a self-enforcing cycle where SMS regulatory collective actions dominate the response to safety issues—often at the expense of proactive and innovative risk identification. The cap doom loop can be problematic because it slows down innovation, potentially causing risks to be missed.
According to Tyran, the biggest problem with the cap doom loop is most transit safety teams are small, so it’s hard to ensure the level of safety risk is as small as it can be. However, he points to some leading (proactive) and lagging (reactive) indicators to help transit agencies and state DOTs protect their riders.
Leading indicators include:
- Safety training completion rates
- Hazard reports
- Near-miss tracking
- Safety audits and inspections
- Training participation and retention
- Safety culture surveys
Lagging indicators include:
- Incident and accident rates
- Regulatory violations
- Customer complaints related to safety
The questions to ask
Tyran points to four questions transit agencies and state DOTs can ask to ensure their SMS is effective:
- Are safety risks being identified and mitigated early?
- Is there a culture of safety ownership at all levels?
- Are lessons learned from incidents being integrated into operations?
- Is leadership visibly committed to safety?
Culture check
Tyran says the key to successful SMS implementation is to make sure the workplace culture accepts SMS. He calls workplace culture the “invisible engine” behind SMS. Tyran says to ensure the workplace culture accepts SMS, the organization should ask itself three questions:
- Do employees feel safe reporting issues?
- Is safety prioritized over productivity?
- Are leaders modeling safe behavior?
Tyran notes SMS is about “checking impact, not about checking boxes,” and that a good SMS doesn’t happen overnight.
“An effective SMS should never be static,” Tyran noted. “If it doesn’t work, SMS allows you to change it, so you can see a difference.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) helping SMS?
Towards the end of the webinar, Tyran expressed his excitement towards the future of SMS. He mentioned that AI is in everyday lives right now, and that nobody expected AI chatbots like ChatGPT to be impacting daily activity at this stage. Tyran believes AI could potentially be a game changer for developing SMS in the future.
He ended the session by asking those in attendance that work for transit agencies or state DOTs to start thinking about their SMS plans if they haven’t already, noting Denver RTD’s SMS plan was started from scratch.
“There shouldn’t be any competition when it comes to safety in transportation,” Tyran concluded.
About the Author
Brandon Lewis
Associate Editor
Brandon Lewis is a recent graduate of Kent State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Lewis is a former freelance editorial assistant at Vehicle Service Pros in Endeavor Business Media’s Vehicle Repair Group. Lewis brings his knowledge of web managing, copyediting and SEO practices to Mass Transit Magazine as an associate editor. He is also a co-host of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.