UK: The Office of Rail & Road has published 10 recommendations to help the rail industry make health and safety interventions more effectively and efficiently.
ORR led an industry-wide project, collaborating with Network Rail, train and freight operating companies, the Rail Safety & Standards Board and others, to find good examples of how ‘reasonable practicability’ is being tested for.
This work found scope for greater consistency and for improving engagement and collaboration.
ORR’s recommendations are:
- Industry should enhance its understanding of how to test reasonable practicability;
- Network Rail should continue to develop and implement its approach and guidance for determining reasonable practicability, including a tool for cost-benefit analysis in line with RSSB’s industry guidance. Network Rail, RSSB and ORR should ensure that the approaches to testing reasonable practicability for industry and Network Rail are aligned as far as possible;
- ORR and the Department for Transport should work together to improve DfT’s awareness of priorities for health and safety. ORR will engage with DfT and other rail funders on how it can share perspectives and provide advice to enhance their assessment of health and safety interventions;
- When new trains are being considered, the party acting as the lead on procurement should ensure engagement, where possible, with the future operator to ensure that health and safety issues relating to the planned use of the train are considered and understood by all parties before the design is finalised. ORR also has a role to promote the principles of health and safety by design and clarify the limitations of the interoperability process in relation to operational safety;
- The government’s rail reform programme should consider how health and safety by design can be improved when new trains are being procured and realise the benefits of integrating track and train;
- Network Rail should develop a more robust process for capturing significant health and safety compliance issues and escalating these within the organisation;
- Network Rail should consider ways to improve how regional and national approaches to address emerging risks are managed, which will allow for effective decision making at corporate level;
- For major health and safety interventions, Network Rail should improve its monitoring of cost and project outcomes to ensure that costs are controlled and test that intended benefits are realised. This should include re-evaluating reasonable practicability when there are significant changes in costs and/or the means to realise health and safety benefits;
- Network Rail should improve its governance, and documentation of decisions on major health and safety initiatives to improve transparency and to support Recommendation 8;
- Network Rail and ORR should explore opportunities to further strengthen existing engagement on significant health and safety issues.
‘Britain has one of the safest railways in the world, which is something that industry can and should be immensely proud of’, said HM Chief Inspector of Railways Richard Hines on March 17. ‘We aim to maintain that excellent standard and drive for continuous improvement, while ensuring greater consistency in the consideration of the costs and benefits of safety interventions. This project has kickstarted positive cross-industry conversations which have identified changes that are already being made to ensure the right safety decisions are made at the right time.’
