Recommendations on formalized safety management systems

Ensuring the operation of a complex system including potentially dangerous elements (energy, transport, chemistry...) at an acceptable and controlled level of safety requires not only technical expertise, but also organization. The terms "safety management system" (SMS) or "safety management system" (SMS) are nowadays the most commonly used to describe the set of organizational measures explicitly taken by an organization to ensure safety. This SMS can be described (usually is described) in a document (or a set of documents). They are therefore stable, explicit measures, the reality of which can, in principle, be verified.

In today's liberal-economy world, governments (collectively and individually) regulate, set objectives on behalf of the public and control (or have them controlled). It is up to operators to develop the processes and organizational measures needed to carry out their activities in line with their quality criteria, while complying with legal and regulatory requirements. In the field of "high-risk" activities (energy, transport, chemicals, etc.), the operator must provide a priori (before commencing operations) evidence to convince the authorities of his ability and willingness to operate under acceptable safety conditions.

In this context, the SMS of operators of "high-risk" systems now plays a central role. Required by a number of national and supranational regulations, it forms the basis for relations between operators and the authorities issuing authorizations or control bodies, and structures the risk management of the companies concerned.

The most common drift is to write an SMS to satisfy administrative requirements and obtain authorizations, without it being the expression of the company's reality. A team, often external, puts together a file based on its knowledge of the authorities' expectations, but with as little disruption to the company as possible. The company then lives a somewhat schizophrenic double life: its real (and hidden) life, and its official life on paper.

Obviously, this gap between actual safety management and official safety management is counter-productive. To be useful, to contribute to the company's success, the SMS must be adapted to the particularities of the organization, it must be specific to it ("fit it like a glove", "stick to it"), employees must recognize themselves in it, it must express reality and not theory. Consequently, it must evolve with the company, following, accompanying and participating in its transformations.

However, the SMS is a fundamental and powerful tool for dialogue between the organization and its environment, in particular the authorities representing public interests. To play this role effectively, it must speak...