Deputies in Safety Review Board

Welcome on board.

Good morning, Carlos. At our organization, we do permit members of our Corporate Safety Board (Safety Review Board) to send an alternate (deputy) in their place. The only person who is not permitted to do this is the Chair of the meeting. Our meeting quorum is at least 50% of the members, plus the chair. If the Chair of the meeting is not satisfied that the right people are in attendance (even if we have quorum), they may elect to re-schedule the meeting. However, allowing an alternate to attend often allows us to avoid cancelling/rescheduling meetings when there are scheduling conflicts. Especially if the scheduling conflict comes up at the last minute, when it becomes very challenging to find another available time for the whole group. If the alternate can not speak to a topic that comes up, we raise a bring forward action item that is tracked in the minutes. If it is urgent, the Chair may request that the action be completed ASAP, and not wait until the next meeting for a response.

Hello Carlos.
In principle, a manager deputy shall act as the manager in the absence of the manager/Nominated Person (NP). Some authorities (NAA) even ask the organisations to notify them of the new NP deputy and their competencies assessment. Some organisations even get the NP deputies accepted by the NAA and, if applicable, approved with Form 4. This is the principle of assuring effective business continuity for risk management purposes. The regulation establishes the need for deputies. Unfortunately, in some realities, the communication between the manager and the deputy is not ideal, and the prerogatives of the deputy are not the same as the manager; therefore, one might ask: Is a deputy effectively representing the manager's interests and responsibilities in the meeting? The manager's deputies should have the same access to information as the managers, also the same responsibilities and prerogatives in order to replace them effectively when necessary. So, Carlos, my answer is: It depends on to what extent deputies are actively involved in the management.

Alternatively, I have also used Johnathan's suggestion as a partial yet intelligent mitigation. However, we still end up in a situation where an incomplete deputy might just attend the meeting as "a pair of ears" and not the expected voice for a constructive discussion. Sometimes being compliant does not necessarily mean being aligned with the law's intention.

In my opinion, the SRB is the highest level meeting. In our case, we schedule the meetings at least 3 months in advance and in our Management System manual attendance is compulsory unless it is for major reasons (illness, etc). For the Responsible Persons who are pilots, coaches, etc. they cannot be absent because they are doing other activities in the organisation.

My question is: How many SRBs do you do in a year?

Thank you all for your answers, they are really interesting.

Regular SRB are well planned in advance. My question came when we wanted to have an ad-hoc SRB and was very difficult to have all the manager's attendance in short notice.