SMS — Safety Management System

A Safety Management System is the documented organisation, procedures and accountabilities through which a railway undertaking or infrastructure manager controls the risks of its operation — the corporate machinery that turns safety from individual diligence into a managed process. The Railway Safety Directive (EU) 2016/798 makes an SMS a legal precondition: a railway undertaking obtains its single safety certificate, and an infrastructure manager its safety authorisation, by demonstrating the SMS meets the requirements spelled out in Regulation (EU) 2018/762 — risk management integrated with CSM-RA for changes, competence management, occurrence reporting and learning, emergency preparedness, safety culture and continuous improvement. After certification, the Common Safety Method for monitoring (CSM-MON) obliges the organisation to check that its risk controls actually work in operation, closing the loop supervision by the national safety authority then audits. The SMS is also where interfaces are governed: contractors, ECMs and station operators all connect to the certificate-holder's risk controls through it.