Leading by example: DBQ Regional Airport SMS
In 2011, Cartegraph assisted the Dubuque Municipal Airport (DBQ) in becoming one of the first U.S. Part 139 Airports to be compliant with the proposed External Safety Management System (SMS) requirements proposed by the FAA.
DBQ was part of the first pilot group of 20 airports to receive Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grant money to implement an External SMS as part of the FAA's study of the implementation and use of an external SMS as part of a broader Safety Risk Management program.
Planning a solution…
Seeking to design and implement software tools for the airport’s overall SMS process and procedures, DBQ assembled a team comprised of Texas-based consulting firm, Applied Research Associates, Cartegraph, and its own Airport Services staff.
One of DBQ’s desires was to link its SMS software — which is, at its core, a request management system — with a work management system so safety and maintenance request issues submitted into the SMS could be evaluated, prioritized, and assigned to maintenance staff for resolution.
As an existing Cartegraph client, DBQ already owned Cartegraph's work management software, WORKdirector. Having an existing work management system in place not only eliminated the need to build custom SMS software from scratch, it also ensured the system would be upgradeable long into the future.
Practical application…
Working in tandem with ARA and DBQ, Cartegraph, deployed the inaugural version of the Airport SMS web-portal on DBQ's website, giving airport and airline staff, tenants — and, in some cases, travelers, and airport visitors — the ability to conveniently submit safety and maintenance issues via flydbq.com.
By clicking the icon on the airport’s website, or by downloading an iPhone or Android application to your smart phone, safety and maintenance requests can be submitted into the airports SMS system for review, evaluation, prioritization, assignment and resolution — all as part of the same software system.
In accordance with DBQ’s specifications, incidents can be submitted anonymously. And those individuals who wish to follow-up on their submissions can create secure user accounts to gain access and view the status of their request(s). Safety issues and maintenance requests can also be manually logged into the system by airport staff in the event the request is emailed or called into airport staff.
Tangible results…
Using Cartegraph's integrated work, request, and asset management software systems, DBQ has gained the ability to receive an SMS issue and quickly assign that issue, if warranted, to maintenance staff via work order. In turn, that work order can be associated with infrastructure and asset inventories such as signage, runway lighting, and facilities. Additionally, all the request, work, and asset information can be queried, reported, and projected into a GIS map of the airport properties.
By extending its SMS to include work and asset management, the airport can manage more of the information and workflow related to internal and external safety issues. Information such as time and cost to mitigate safety issues can be analyzed through the use of work orders. Safety issues that relate to specific assets or infrastructure systems can be quickly and easily identified by linking the work orders to asset infrastructure inventories.
Work and asset management systems used for tracking proactive and routine airport maintenance can also aid in reducing safety risk by allowing users to evaluate asset performance. For example, maintaining a runway light inventory and associating work orders to those inventories every time a bulb burns out will help organizations identify lights that are not performing up to standards. This ability to identify performance trends will help airports identify problems and investigate solutions. In this case, is it the bulb? Or is it a power supply issue that may be causing lights to burn out quicker than expected?
No matter the industry, issue, incident, or problem, one thing is certain — accurate, organized methods of gathering and using information make all the difference in the world. And by following DBQ’s lead, your airport or facility will gain the ability to increase safety, lower liability, and improve operations.
