SAFETY IN NUMBERS
The UK can boast one of the safest railways in the world. But there’s no room for complacency, as RSSB’s Director of System Safety GEORGE BEARFIELD explains
O n July 13 RSSB published its Annual
Safety Performance report - one of the key tools it uses to help its members understand, manage and enhance safety on the railways.
This document provides a yearly summary of the key data and trends that RSSB gathers and compiles into reports on a monthly basis.
Not only does it provide a comprehensive evidence base on which the industry can develop and drive targeted safety improvements, but it also identifies problem areas where more attention is needed.
RSSB Director of System Safety George Bearfield says: “Through research, innovation and insight, our role is to help support our members deliver a safer, more efficient and sustainable railway.
“A big part of what we do is collect, monitor and analyse risk data, and the Annual Safety
Performance report is one of the key things we produce from this.”
The latest report confirms that 2015/16 was another good year for safety performance on the UK rail network, which is especially impressive when considered against a backdrop of a 2% growth in demand.
The headline figures show a ninth consecutive year where no passenger or workforce fatalities have occurred as a result of a train accident, ranking the UK as one of the safest networks in Europe. Statistically speaking, travelling by train is 22 times safer than by car, and 1,200 times safer than by motorcycle, according to the figures compiled by RSSB.
But what makes Britain’s safety record so good? Bearfield says that there are a number of factors that differentiate the UK rail network from international counterparts, including “our open and mature approach to reporting safety incidents, investigating them and responding to them”.
He adds: “The industry has highly developed systems and processes in place and shares information very openly. Another factor is our proportionate risk-based approach to safety issues. The industry, of course, has limited resources but in order to assure we get the best safety outcome, we routinely assess risk and put our funds where they’ll do the most good.
“Yet another factor is how the whole industry works together collaboratively to deal strategically with safety issues in a co-ordinated and sustained way. These arrangements are now further enhanced by the launch of the industry health and safety strategy earlier this year.”
The strategy Bearfield mentions is detailed in a document published by RSSB in April
entitled Leading Health & Safety on Britain’s
Railway – a strategy for working together. As the rail sector’s first ever pan-industry health and safety strategy, it focuses on 12 priority risk areas requiring collaborative action by all rail companies, as identified using RSSB data reporting.
It is an example of how RSSB highlights the areas where increased risk needs to be managed, to enable the development of swift and targeted responses. Improvements don’t happen automatically - they’re the result of sustained and collaborative programmes rolled out across the industry, under the banner of this new health and safety strategy.
Says Bearfield: “While a growth in passenger numbers is obviously a good thing, it does create challenges for safety performance. In the face of these challenges there are some positive things to report and be thankful for. But, rail is not a risk-free environment, and this year there are some concerns to report – there have been eight passenger fatalities at stations, which is the highest number since 2006/ 07.
“Alcohol is recorded as being a contributing factor in many incidents, so the industry has made significant efforts to improve awareness of how staff can best manage intoxicated passengers, following a re-launch in September of updated practical guidance based on RSSB research.
“Another key trend to emerge is an increase in the number of assaults on passengers on the railways. This was an emerging trend in 2014/15 and it can be seen that numbers have increased, even when taking into account the growth in passenger numbers.
“Some of this is likely to be partly down to an improvement in the recording of these offences in the last few years. However, the industry has been working with renewed energy to address this increase.
“Where there are concerns shown in the Annual Safety Performance report, co-ordinated activity is already under way.”
In order to collect this data, all rail companies were required to report safety incidents to a database called the Safety Management Information System (SMIS), which is managed by RSSB. All data presented in the RSSB’s Annual Safety
While a growth in passenger numbers is obviously a good thing, it does create challenges for safety performance. GEORGE BEARFIELD, RSSB System Safety Director.
We routinely assess risk and put our funds where they’ll do the most good. GEORGE BEARFIELD, RSSB System Safety Director.
Performancee report is therefore also managed and collated using SMIS.
It has been in operation since 1997, and organisations including Network Rail and train and freight operating companies enter about 75,000 events per year.
SMIS has worked well for nearly 20 years, but is becoming increasingly out of date, expensive and time-consuming to maintain. Therefore, RSSB is embarking on its SMIS+ programme to create a new online reporting system using newer software.
The underlying purpose to support the industry in how it manages its safety data and uses information to make informed decisions remains the same, but the new SMIS+ system promises to create a more powerful and intuitive tool to report and track all safetyrelated incidents or ‘near misses’ in a new common format. SMIS+ will also merge the two separate systems currently used to log safety-related events, and close calls that did not lead to any actual injury or harm.
“The SMIS+ programme aims to create a new cloud-based online system using up-to-date management software,” explains Bearfield.
“The first two phases will offer the industry a more powerful and intuitive tool to report and track all safety-related incidents. At the same time, it will secure a significant reduction in the annual support, hosting and on-going development costs for the service.
“New business intelligence features will also allow our stakeholders to create their own local safety performance and close call dashboards. Gradually, more advanced features will become available, such as the ability to allow people to record and manage safety incidents and close calls via mobile devices.
“Delivery of this new system will provide a step-change in the efficiency of industry data collection, analysis and the quality of intelligence available. This should very much be in evidence by the time of our next Annual
Safety Performance report in July 2017.”