This paper presents an alternative way to use records from safety investigations as a means to support the evaluation of safety management (SM) aspects. Datasets from safety investigation reports and progress records of an aviation organization were analyzed with the scope of assessing safety management’s role, speed of safety communication, timeliness of safety investigation processes and realization of safety recommendations, and the extent of convergence among SM and investigation teams. The results suggested an interfering role of the safety department, severe delays in safety investigations, timely implementation of recommendations, quick dissemination of investigation reports to the end-users, and a low ratio of investigation team recommendations included in the final safety investigation reports. The results were attributed to non-scalable safety investigation procedures, ineffective resource management, lack of consistent bidirectional communication, lack of investigators’ awareness about the overall organizational context, and a weak commitment of other departments to the realization of safety recommendations. The set of metrics and the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods presented in this paper can support organizations to the transition towards a performance-based evaluation of safety management.
Literature and industry standards do not mention inclusive guidelines to generate safety recommendations. Following a literature review, we suggest nine design criteria as well as the classification of safety recommendations according to their scope (i.e. organisational context, stakeholders addressed and degree of change) and their focus, the latter corresponding to the type of risk barrier introduced. The design and classification criteria were applied to 625 recommendations published by four aviation investigation agencies. The analysis results suggested sufficient implementation of most of the design criteria. Concerning their scope, the findings showed an emphasis on processes and structures (i.e. lower organisational contexts), adaptations that correspond to medium degree of changes, and local stakeholders. Regarding the focus of the recommendations, non-technical barriers that rely mostly on employees’ interpretation were introduced by the vast majority of safety recommendations. Also, statistically significant differences were detected across investigation authorities and time periods. This study demonstrated how the application of the suggested design and classification frameworks could reveal valuable information about the quality, scope and focus of recommendations. Especially the design criteria could function as a starting point towards the introduction of a common standard to be used at local, national and international levels.
Vertical and horizontal alignment within organizations are seen as prerequisites for meeting strategic objectives and indications of effective management. In the area of safety management, the concept of vertical alignment has been followed through the introduction of hierarchical structures and bidirectional communication, but horizontal alignment has been given little attention. The principal goal of this study was the assessment of horizontal alignment within an aviation organization with the use of data from safety investigations, audits and meetings in order to explore the extent to which (1) causal factors recorded in safety investigation reports comprised topics discussed by safety committees and focus areas of internal safety auditors, and (2) the agendas of safety committees include weak points revealed during safety audits. The study employed qualitative and quantitative analysis of data collected over a 6 years’ period at three organizational levels. The results suggested a low horizontal alignment across the three pairs of the corresponding safety management activities within each organizational level. The findings were attributed to the inadequacy of procedures and lack of a safety information database for consistently sharing safety information, cultural factors and lack of planning for the coordination of safety management activities. The current research comprises a contribution to the literature and practice and introduces a technique to assess the intra-alignment of safety management initiatives within various organizational levels. Future research is needed in order to investigate the association between horizontal alignment of safety management practices and safety performance.
Every year the police are confronted with an ever increasing number of complex cases involving missing persons. About 100 people are reported missing every year in the Netherlands, of which, an unknown number become victims of crime, and presumed buried in clandestine graves. Similarly, according to NWVA, several dead animals are also often buried illegally in clandestine graves in farm lands, which may result in the spread of diseases that have significant consequences to other animals and humans in general. Forensic investigators from both the national police (NP) and NWVA are often confronted with a dilemma: speed versus carefulness and precision. However, the current forensic investigation process of identifying and localizing clandestine graves are often labor intensive, time consuming and employ classical techniques, such as walking sticks and dogs (Police), which are not effective. Therefore, there is an urgent request from the forensic investigators to develop a new method to detect and localize clandestine graves quickly, efficiently and effectively. In this project, together with practitioners, knowledge institutes, SMEs and Field labs, practical research will be carried out to devise a new forensic investigation process to identify clandestine graves using an autonomous Crime Scene Investigative (CSI) drone. The new work process will exploit the newly adopted EU-wide drone regulation that relaxes a number of previously imposed flight restrictions. Moreover, it will effectively optimize the available drone and perception technologies in order to achieve the desired functionality, performance and operational safety in detecting/localizing clandestine graves autonomously. The proposed method will be demonstrated and validated in practical operational environments. This project will also make a demonstrable contribution to the renewal of higher professional education. The police and NVWA will be equipped with operating procedures, legislative knowledge, skills and technological expertise needed to effectively and efficiently performed their forensic investigations.
