FTA Bus Safety Oversight
Program
FPTA/CTD Annual Conference
October 2015
FTA Bus Safety Program Background
• 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
Slide 2
Major Bus Program Elements
• Resource website
• Voluntary onsite reviews
• Orientation seminars
• Ongoing outreach
Voluntary
Onsite
Reviews
State DOT
Orientation
Seminars
Bus Safety
Program
Website
Industry
Coordination
and
Outreach
Slide 3
Safety Management Systems
(SMS)
Slide 4
What FTA wants…from a safety
perspective
• 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
Slide 5
What should change look like?
• 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
Slide 6
Questions we all need to ask
that SMS helps answer
• 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?
Slide 7
What SMS does
• 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
Slide 8
Critical Concerns
• Two critical safety related concerns that
demonstrate the need for SMS are:
– The Organizational Accident
– Practical Drift
Slide 9
The Organizational Accident
Slide 10
Two Types of Accidents
• Individual accidents
– those resulting from the actions or inactions of people
• Organizational accidents
– those resulting from actions or inactions of
organizations
Slide 11
Organizational Accidents
“Organizational accidents have multiple causes
involving many people operating at different levels of
their respective companies.”
– James Reason, Managing the Risks of Organizational
Accidents
Slide 12
Organizational Accidents Involve
Active and Latent Factors
Safety
Breakdown
Hazards
Some holes due to
latent conditions
Some holes due to
active failures
Slide 13
Organizational Accident and SMS
Identifying and analyzing latent organizational factors
that may contribute to accidents and incidents is a
critical tool in the transit risk management process.
Slide 14
“The discovery of human error should
be considered the starting point of the
investigation, and not the ending point.”
- ISASI Forum
Slide 15
Practical Drift
Slide 16
Imperfect Systems – The Practical Drift
“Work as imagined”
System and Tasks as designed and engineered
Procedure
“Uncoupling of practice
Start of Operations
Local Reality
“Work as actually done”
Over Time
Practical Drift
from procedure”
Why? What happened?
• Service delivery
pressures
• Procedure no longer
practical
• Short cuts are more
efficient
• Supervisor allows it
• Informal processes
• Training inadequately
conveyed risk
Practice
Slide 17
Navigating the Drift – The Need for Data
Baseline Performance
Practical Drift
Organization
The difference between “where we are”
and “where we thought we were”
Slide 18
Practical Drift and SMS
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.
Slide 19
SMS Overview
Slide 20
What is SMS?
SMS is the formal, top-down, organization-wide, datadriven 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.
Slide 21
SMS Framework Components or Pillars
1. Safety Management Policy
2. Safety Risk Management
3. Safety Assurance
4. Safety Promotion
Slide 22
How the Pillars Interact
Slide 23
Safety Management Policy
Slide 24
Safety Management Policy Pillar
and its Subcomponents
Safety
Management
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
Slide 25
The Safety Management Policy
Subcomponent
Safety
Management
Policy
Safety
Management
Policy Statement
• 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
Accountabilities
&
Responsibilities
Integration with
Public Safety &
Emergency
Management
SMS
Documentation
& Records
Slide 26
Safety Accountabilities & Responsibilities
Subcomponent
Safety
Management
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
Safety
Accountabilities
&
Responsibilities
Integration with
Public Safety &
Emergency
Management
SMS
Documentation
& Records
Slide 27
Integration with Public Safety &
Emergency Management Subcomponent
• Ensures integration of programs that have input
into, or output from, the SMS
Safety
Management
Policy
Safety
Management
Policy Statement
• 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
Accountabilities
&
Responsibilities
Integration with
Public Safety &
Emergency
Management
SMS
Documentation
& Records
Slide 28
SMS Documentation & Records
Subcomponent
• Agency ensures that it formalizes and documents key
elements of SMS such as:
Safety
Management
Policy




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
Safety
Accountabilities
&
Responsibilities
Integration with
Public Safety &
Emergency
Management
SMS
Documentation
& Records
Slide 29
Safety Risk Management
Slide 30
SRM Pillar and its Subcomponents
• Vital to the success of SMS
Safety
Risk
Management
• 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
Slide 31
Hazard Identification & Analysis
Subcomponent
Safety
Risk
Management
Hazard
Identification &
Analysis
Safety Risk
Evaluation and
Mitigation
Slide 32
Hazard Identification & Analysis
Hazard Identification & Analysis
1
Operational
System
Description
2
Hazard
Identification
Safety Risk Evaluation
Safety Risk Mitigation
Hazard Identification & Analysis
Collect data / info
• The only way to know your safety
risk prior to an accident
Hazard
Analysis
• Provides the foundation for your
safety risk evaluation activities
State the generic
hazard(s)
• Must be agency-wide and fully
supported and promoted
Identify hazard
components
Identify specific
consequences
Slide 33
Safety Risk Evaluation & Mitigation
Subcomponent
Safety
Risk
Management
Hazard
Identification &
Analysis
Safety Risk
Evaluation and
Mitigation
Slide 34
Safety Risk Evaluation Process
Hazard Identification & Analysis
Safety Risk Evaluation
3
Safety Risk Mitigation
Evaluate
the Safety Risk
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
Express probability of
consequence
Express severity of
consequence
Evaluate current
mitigations
Index safety risk
Acceptable
level of
mitigations?
Slide 35
Safety Risk Mitigation Process
Hazard Identification & Analysis
Safety Risk Evaluation
Safety Risk Mitigation
4
Mitigate Safety
Risk
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
Slide 36
Safety Assurance
Slide 37
Safety Assurance Pillar and
its Subcomponents
• 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
Safety
Assurance
Management
of
change
Continuous
improvement
Slide 38
Safety Performance Monitoring &
Measurement Subcomponent
Safety management requires
feedback on safety performance
to complete the safety
management cycle
Safety
performance
monitoring &
measurement
Safety
Assurance
Management
of
change
Continuous
improvement
Slide 39
Management of Change Subcomponent
Safety
Assurance
Safety
performance
monitoring &
measurement
Management
of
change
Continuous
improvement
Slide 40
Continuous Improvement Subcomponent
Safety
Assurance
Safety
performance
monitoring &
measurement
Management
of
change
Continuous
improvement
Slide 41
Safety Promotion
Slide 42
Safety Promotion Pillar and its
Subcomponents
Safety
Promotion
Safety
Communication
Competencies
and Training
Slide 43
Safety Communication Subcomponent
• 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
Safety
Promotion
Safety
Communication
Competencies
and Training
Slide 44
Competencies & Training
Subcomponent
• 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
Safety
Promotion
Safety
Communication
Competencies
and Training
Slide 45
Employee Safety Reporting
Slide 46
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
Slide 47
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
Slide 48
FTA’s
Safety Training and Resource Website
http://safety.fta.dot.gov/
FTA SMS Framework
Resources
Training
Events
SMS Information
Blast emails to registered users
Slide 49