February - A Month of Planning and Preparation

This month we have been focused on developing our input to the ICAO High Level Safety Conference at the end of March, planning a key drafting workshop for the SMS implementation Guide and the joint meeting with Eurocontrol on the Safety Maturity metric. As always these activities are consuming a lot of effort from the Workgroups involved and I thank them for that.

The High Level Safety Conference is in Montreal in late March. The SSC will be submitting a paper on Just Culture, which is a build on our joint position with IFATCA. We are also looking at how to present our key safety priorities for the conference
to consider.

In mid March the drafting group for the SMS Implementation Guide will be meeting in London to review the full set ofchapters. This is on the time line for the delivery of the Guide by AGM 2010.

In the same week a joint group of CANSO and Eurocontrol experts will be meeting to discuss and agree a way forward on the SMS Maturity Metric. This will ensure that the metrics employed in Europe are in line with the needs of CANSO members.
 
As some of you will have seen on email recently, Stephen Angus as been selected as the new chair of the SSC to succeed Gretchen Burrett who is moving the UK CAA as Group Director Safety Regulation. Stephen has been serving as the vice chair and this should ensure a smooth transition.

It has also been confirmed that my secondment will continue until the next global safety seminar in November.

Finally for people, I would like to inform you that Dr David Harrison has been appointed as the new Group Director Safety for NATS. David has been with NATS for over 20 years and has worked in both technical and operational leadership roles. I am sure he will fit in well in our global safety family.

The global strategy, or ‘Waypoint 2013’ continues to take shape and will be an integral part of the discussions at the CEO conference in March.

I am working closely with the environment, operations and business transformation programme leads to support the DG to engage with the CEO community over the next couple of months.