Message from RISSB

SPADs – Industry and academia driving reform with RISSB’s help

In its monthly column, RISSB discusses signals passed at danger.

SIGNALS PASSED AT DANGER, or SPADs, are a significant rail safety issue for most rail systems. In 2014, the Rail Industry Safety and Standards Board (RISSB) published a SPAD Risk Management Guideline, providing examples of good practice in SPAD prevention and risk mitigation.

Good practices have been presented in a scaled maturity model style to separate what is basically a minimal approach from the more sophisticated approaches indicative of a mature safety management system. It is recognised that precursors to SPADs can be factors leading to many other risks, and it follows that good SPAD performance is generally a sound indicator of good safety management.

One of the industry groups RISSB co-ordinates on behalf of the rail industry is the SPAD Group. During the past five years, this group has canvassed key SPAD topics and delivered a number of outcomes, and it is currently progressing a range of research projects. Feedback from the SPAD Group will help inform a revised RISSB SPAD Risk Management Guideline, currently scheduled for review in 2021.

The SPAD Group has investigated or is currently investigating a range of key SPAD issues identified by members of the group and the rail industry more broadly. Some examples are as follows: 1. SPAD categorisation: to overcome issues with variable reporting of SPADS, the SPAD Group developed and agreed upon a national categorisation of SPADs, which is now being applied by all rail organisations through the reporting requirements of ONRSR. 2. SPAD costings: to assist RTOs with development of budgets and business cases for SPAD prevention,

novel research was undertaken to quantify SPADs and determine how much a single SPAD actually costs RTOs considering various factors (e.g. loss of service, operational/flow-on impacts and resourcing costs). 3. SPAD pre-cursor behaviours: to overcome the gaps in knowledge around which specific precursors lead to SPADs, this world-leading project is identifying salient predictors for SPADs through an industryfunded Australia and New Zealand-wide project. Results will be presented at the 2019 World Congress in Rail Research and the 2020 RISSB Rail Safety Conference. 4. Training the train controllers: to address the issue of train controllers inadvertently increasing SPAD risk through issues in how they work, clear routes, and communicate, this groundbreaking project is providing the first ever framework for non-technical skills training for controllers. Results will also be presented at the 2019 Word Congress in Rail Training. In many cases, RISSB works closely with academia and industry to generate innovation through research. For many of the projects outlined above, industry has collaborated with Associate Professor Anjum Naweed from Central Queensland University as project lead. A new and exciting project in early development will look at gaining a better understanding of current practices associated with relieving drivers post-SPAD, identifying unknown risks in the process, sharing these practices with RTOs, and then evaluating the potential for harmonisation across Australia and New Zealand.

ABOVE: Good SPAD performance is generally a sound indicator of good safety management.