NAMA trains staff on safety management

The Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) has organised two separate training workshops in Lagos for some of its critical personnel in safety management in line with its determination to build capacity for effective service delivery.
Facilitated by Aviation Academy for Southern Africa (AAFSA), the trainings include a three-day workshop on Safety Management Systems (SMS) and a five-day training which focused on the Impact of Human Factor in Air Traffic Management Safety.
Speaking at the commencement of the training, NAMA’s managing director, Capt. Fola Akinkuotu explained that the policy of aggressive training posture of his administration was informed by the need to constantly train and re-train the human person because “only by doing so can we be at par with technology which is also being constantly updated by the passage of each day.”
He expressed delight with the quality of instruction and challenged the participants to see themselves as safety champions of NAMA and “be ready to impart this knowledge to others so that it can trickle down the agency with the ultimate aim of making our processes and procedures more compliant with the International Civil Aviation Standard and Recommended Practices (ICAO SARPs).”
Akinkuotu said the concept of safety must be understood and imbibed by everybody in the system such that safety issues could be promptly reported by subordinates without fear of reprimand.
In his remarks, the chief instructor, Mr. Raymond Wittstock said the urgency and responsibility of SMS including the seriousness of safety at the airport “is what trainings such as this set out to emphasize and reinforce.”
He stressed that the time had come for aviation authorities to ensure the buy-in of all workers in safety management at the airports.
The training on SMS was meant for members of NAMA Safety Action Group (SAG) and selected air traffic controllers in the agency according to their SMS- related functions in the field, while the workshop on human factor was targeted strictly at air traffic controllers selected from strategic airports across the country.
The SMS workshop was designed to impact basic SMS knowledge to participants and enable them understand the basic concepts, principles, theories, procedures and processes of Safety Management Systems in aviation.
The training primarily focused on the provisions of the state safety programme (SSP) and the SMS manuals including their interrelationships.
On the other hand, the human workshop dwelled extensively on the crucial role of human factor in hazard identification, safety risk management and critical decision making in the process of air traffic management.