SMS / FAA Part 5

FAA Part 5 Resources Information

Many of our core modules are built around FAA Part 5 requirements, which are in turn modeled after the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The FAA’s Part 5 requirements are organized into 4 parts, each of which is one of the 4 Pillars of SMS:

  1. Safety Policy
  2. Safety Risk Management
  3. Safety Assurance
  4. Safety Promotion

Part 5: Safety Policy Requirements

Part 5 FAA Safety Policy requirements are the first thing your aviation SMS program will satisfy when you are implementing your safety program (Phases 1 of Implementation). The main parts of Part 5 Safety Policy requirements are:

  • Safety policy statement (5.21)
  • Safety accountability and authority (5.25(a)(b))
  • Duties and responsibilities of accountable executive and safety management (5.25(c))
  • Coordination of emergency response planning (5.27)

Part 5: Safety Risk Management Requirements

Part 5 FAA Safety Risk Management (SRM) requirements are addressed in Phase 2 of aviation SMS implementation. This pillar requires you to build your “operation risk profile.” Building your operational risk profile is an ongoing process that is broken into 5 steps, each of which is built into Part 5 requirements:

  1. System Description
  2. Hazard Identification
  3. Risk Analysis
  4. Risk Assessment
  5. Risk Controls

Each step has multiple requirements, which are explored in the links above. The end goal with the FAA Part 5 SRM process requirement is to:

  • Describe all elements of your operations that have bearing on hazards, risks, and mitigation
  • List all hazards
  • List all risks (i.e., potential accidents, mishaps, etc.) associated with each hazard
  • List all risk controls for mitigation
  • Document whether or not each risk is acceptable (with a risk assessment).

See the following video link for How SMS Pro Fulfills FAA Part 5 Safety Risk Management Requirements. The SRM process is integrated with the Safety Assurance pillar in a contestant feedback loop, whereby both pillars constantly inform one another in a larger SMS process.

Part 5: Safety Assurance Requirements

The Part 5 Safety Assurance process requirement deals with verifying that your SMS program is performing on a daily basis. This process also has 5 parts:

  1. Safety Assurance Performance Monitoring
  2. Data Acquisition
  3. Analysis of Data
  4. Safety Performance Assessment
  5. Continuous Improvement

See the following video link for How SMS Pro Fulfills FAA Part 5 Safety Assurance Requirements.

Part 5: Safety Promotion Requirements

Building a positive safety culture is one of highest, if not the highest, goals of aviation safety management systems. The FAA builds requirements for cultivating safety culture into its Safety Promotion pillar.

In the shadow of the SRM and SA pillars, it’s very easy to overlook just how important Safety Promotion is, and how much it warrants a significant amount of a safety manager’s attention. Its main concerns are:

In short, Safety Promotion covers many of the mission-critical mechanisms that drive safety risk management and safety assurance performance.

For more resources on FAA Part 5 requirements, you will find the following extremely valuable:

Part 5 Resources Link