It depends on how mature your SMS and how large your organisation is. If you are starting your SMS journey and are around 20 personnel strong, then it should take half a day to conduct the assessment, half a day to draft the results into a report and a further day to create a strategy and plan of activities to take in priority order. If your organisation is several thousand strong, and your SMS is mature, you can add a few more days to absorb the information you already have.
The diagnostic, safety meetings (once designed) and any training delivery will be carried out on site. Drafting documents, training courses, meeting structures etc. will be done remotely (unless the customer needs attendance on site).
This will be down to the customer and the speed at which the SMS needs to be embedded. Typically, the training begins with the Accountable Manager and Senior Leadership Team as they need to drive the safety culture and activities (and not say/do the wrong thing if a member of staff makes an error/mistake or raises a report). It is during this time, and only once the leaders fully understand the work that needs to be done, can a properly resourced plan with timelines be drafted. The shortest time for SMS implementation could be 6 months, but this would only include the building blocks, as training and culture change take much longer. Normally it takes 18 months to 2 years to fully embed a SMS.
That will depend on the engagement, support and whether you already a SQEP/Competent person and/or team of people in place to manage the SMS on behalf of the Accountable Manager. What THI-SMS would say is that costs are approximately 1/3 of the cost of other SMS consultancy businesses due to the business model used and minimal overheads.
Have the Accountable Manager and key members of the Senior Leadership Team attend the SMS training sessions, have a robust and effective process in place for reading and approving SMS documentation, free up your personnel to become key members of the SMS (i.e., safety investigators, safety champions, Event Review Group members) and to attend training courses to give them the skills/knowledge they need.
A SMS is a small investment that can bring big business benefits. You need a SMS manager, preferably full time, for THI-SMS to train up. You may want to purchase SMS software, but it’s not essential. An annual budget for Safety Training and Promotion is necessary but it doesn’t have be a lot. That said, one client organised a safety day for 100 of its most influential people and hired a venue for a full day safety conference. This cost circa £4000 but it had a dramatic and very positive effect on the safety culture, thereby speeding up the safety culture change and increasing trust/reporting.
Part 21G (Link)
Part 21 Subpart G Safety Management System (SMS) implementation | UK Civil Aviation Authority
Part 21J (Link)
Part 21 Subpart J Safety Management System (SMS) Implementation | UK Civil Aviation Authority
Part 145 (Link)
Full link address: Part 145 Safety Management System (SMS) implementation | UK Civil Aviation Authority