Baldwin Aviation is continuing to add new features to its safety management system (SMS) programs, including an automated safety risk profile that is rolling out here at NBAA, as the company also expands its reach into voluntary reporting, safety-information sharing and other safety areas. These efforts come as Baldwin Aviation strives to become a “one-stop” safety shop for business aviation, said v-p and COO Sonnie Bates. The vision is all safety missions inside the Baldwin portal.
“Every week, our in-house programmers, developers and analysts are working to develop new code and test new code to make our tools even better for customers.” The initiatives often come from customer suggestions or requests, he said.
Once such effort, Bates explained, is to “take the complexity out of safety management and integrate it completely into our tools.” When a customer logs into the Baldwin portal, the program is embedded with the customer’s SMS philosophies and principles, providing the information they need to help them find out what safety performance indicators they need or better assist them in setting their safety targets. “These are the questions customers have right now—safety performance indicators and targets,” he said, adding, “These are some of the things we are working on so this information is at their fingertips.“
The new QuickRisk Safety Profile tool is another of those efforts. To be demonstrated at the Baldwin booth (2639) during NBAA 2016, the feature develops an automated risk profile based on a variety of safety and risk data from the client. “This is a giant step to help the operators see graphically what the risk looks like,” Bates said. The risk profiles will be a value-added function that is automatically folded into a customer’s portal. “This is the first iteration. As customers use it and give us feedback, we’ll continue to evolve it,” Bates said.
Baldwin also has placed an emphasis on manual updating. The company has staff dedicated to the continual review of all the manuals, as well as regulatory changes, to ensure the manuals are as up to date as possible, he said. This includes the scope of documents, from operations manuals to emergency response plans.
This effort is particularly critical as Baldwin has experienced growth from the commercial sector. One of the company’s largest growth areas is from the emergency medical services operations sector. These operators are required to have safety risk processes in place that are up to date, as well as strict protection of safety data, Bates noted.
Voluntary Reporting Efforts
Another of the biggest growth areas for the company is in Aviation Safety Action Programs (ASAPs). Baldwin customers can add ASAP features or have the program totally integrated into the safety management efforts, Bates said. ASAPs, which require a memorandum of understanding between the operator and the FAA, are designed to encourage voluntary reporting to enable companies to identify and address potential unintentional compliance issues and safety trends.
Baldwin’s ASAP customers further have the option of sharing their data through FAA’s Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) program. The company recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitre and the FAA to enable this participation.
“The objective of this initiative is to make aviation safety and reporting FDM [flight data monitoring] data sharing easy and seamless through our clients’ Baldwin software application,” Baldwin Aviation president Don Baldwin said in announcing the MOU. “The process is simple. Based on Baldwin’s Master MOU, our clients will execute a simple one-page agreement with Baldwin that will allow access to ASIAS as well as receive output through Baldwin.”
Mitre will continually aggregate and sort the safety information, and Baldwin will be able to “pull that information on a period basis and share that with our customers in a way that makes sense [for their operations]. Even small operations will…get the benefit of being part of a bigger system,” Bates said.
He noted that participation in programs like ASAP and ASIAS represents a cultural shift for private operators, but he added, “We are seeing more and more operators willing to participate” in such programs. Many operators believed they did not generate enough information to see trend lines, he said. But these programs enable the operation to see larger industry trends, as well as look at their own practices.
These efforts to provide a comprehensive safety packages tailored to the individual organization helped lure Bates to his new role of managing operations at Baldwin.
He joined the company in August after directing the International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO) for the International Business Aviation Council (IBAC) for the past five years.
In announcing his appointment, Don Baldwin said Bates will “oversee all safety programs and technology development and will be providing leadership for the company’s aggressive growth plans in an ever-changing industry.”
Bates said the move to Baldwin enables him to work directly with industry “on more of a grass roots level and get involved with specific issues” for individual companies. He called the move a good fit, noting IBAC’s mission to promotes safety on a global level. “Baldwin takes the next step and says here’s how you do it and here it is based on your operational requirements.”
