In safety science this approach is labelled "Safety-I", and it starts to be questioned because humans do not show failures only. On the contrary, they often actively contribute to safety, sometimes even by deviating from a procedure. This "Safety-II" perspective considers humans to be a "safety factor" as well because of their ability to adjust behaviour to the given situation. However, adaptability requires scope of action and this is where Safety-I and Safety-II contradict each other. While the former restricts freedom of action, the latter requires room for manoeuvring.
Thus, the task of integrating the Safety-II perspective into SMS, which are traditionally Safety-I based, is difficult. This challenge was the main objective of our project. We discovered two methods that contribute to the quality of SMS by integrating Safety-II into SMS without jeopardizing the Safety-I approach.