RAIL 808 Safety Special by Graham Copestake

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ORR inspectors provide assistance to a number of railways around the world, including the Dubai Metro (see page 68). ALAMY.

CONTENTS

Our safest-ever railway

HM Chief Inspector of Railways IAN PROSSER describes how the UK’s impressive safety record sets us apart

50 52 60

Carillion: Safe and sound

Carillion is taking a sincere, holistic approach to ensuring the wellbeing of its workforce

An inspector calls

ORR Inspector TOM WAKE provides an insight into level crossing inspections

RSSB: Safety in numbers

RSSB Director of System Safety GEORGE BEARFIELD says there is no room for complacency on the railway

62 66 67

RAIB: In safe hands

Welcome B

ritain’s railways have never been safer. We have the safest system in Europe and have achieved consistent improvement in standards over the past few years, leading to a hugely important achievement - for the first time ever, there were no workforce fatalities in 2015. Of course, this does not mean that we can sit back and relax. If anything, there is more pressure, now that we have achieved such heights, to maintain that record and to improve the areas that have not enjoyed the same improvement - such as the slightly increased risk of harm to passengers at stations and the high level of earthwork failures. Safety on the railway is the responsibility of everyone who works on it, but of course there always has to be someone there to ensure that standards are maintained, that the law is being applied, and that everyone is going home safe. That’s where the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) comes in. The regulator has just released its latest Annual Health and Safety Report (RAIL 806). In this Safety special, Director of Railway Safety and HM Chief Inspector of Railways

Inspector GRAHAM CLARK explains how RAIB’s work is making our railways a safer place

Why NR’s breathing easy

New technology ensures workers are protected from dust and fumes

Kelvin TOP-SET: It’s no accident

Ian Prosser tells RAIL about his priorities and where he wants to see improvement (page 44). Complacency is not an option for Prosser. RSSB (Rail Safety and Standards Board) describes the landmark moment that was the release of the industry’s first Health and Safety Strategy in March, and we showcase some of the good work being done by companies such as Kelvin TOPSET (page 67) and Carillion (page 50). And to prove that an inspector’s life is not spent sitting behind a computer screen scrutinising numbers, we get out and about on the railway with ORR (page 52) and RAIB (Rail Accident Investigation Branch, page 62) inspectors, to understand just how important they are in keeping up safety standards. Our safety record is something to be truly proud of, so much so that other countries are looking to us to show them just how we manage it (page 68).

Managing Editor: Nigel Harris Assistant Editor: Richard Clinnick Contributing Writers: Stefanie Browne, Paul Stephen Production Manager: Mandy Brett Art Editor: Graham Copestake Sub-Editor: Richard Hampson Managing Director: Tim Lucas

STEFANIE BROWNE

Account Director: Julie Howard

Assistant Editor RailReview

Managing Director DAVID RAMSAY explains why Kelvin TOP-SET is leading the way in incident investigation

ORR: Exporting expertise

Three ORR inspectors share their experiences of exporting UK safety knowledge around the globe

EDITORIAL

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Our safest-ever railway Director of Railway Safety and Chief Inspector of Railways IAN PROSSER tells STEFANIE BROWNE what sets the UK apart in safety terms and how our impeccable record is no reason to stop looking for improvement

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Credit. ORR.

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2,000 1,800 Passenger journeys (millions)

t’s the safest form of land transport, far outstripping the record of anything roads can offer. And over the years, that gap is widening further and further. But it’s more than that. The railway here is the safest in Europe and is among the upper echelons of worldwide systems, too. In July, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) released its Annual Health and Safety Report showing the level of progress the industry has made on improving its safety performance (RAIL 806). “It is a credit to the women and men in the industry that we’ve got to where we’ve got to, particularly those on the front line,” Ian Prosser, Director of Railway Safety and Chief Inspector of Railways for the ORR, tells RAIL. Prosser has just spent the last hour meeting the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Maynard, and is heading off for a HS2 Health and Safety Committee board meeting after this. “Consequently, it’s very fitting that this is the first year we haven’t had a workforce fatality in the whole sector. That has been a long time coming - too long - but at least we’ve now got to this point. We also saw a reduction in the number of major injuries, which means it’s not just a statistical thing (see graphs).” Zero workforce fatalities was not the only achievement in this area either. While it is still tragic that anyone died on the railway, none of the fatalities that took place at level crossings last year were down to the industry being at fault. However, Prosser is keen to point out that this is not to say we should not keep moving forward. While he’s clearly proud of the industry’s achievement, there is a caveat: “The performance in 2015 shows that we have continued to improve, but it’s very important that we do not become complacent, because the things we see through our management maturity model (see panel, page 46) show us there is still quite a lot of scope before the sector gets to excellence.” For all the positive improvements made last year, there were still events such as the nearmiss when steam locomotive 34067 Tangmere passed a signal at danger near Wootton Bassett in March 2015 and narrowly avoided collision with a First Great Western HST. The increasingly frequent landslips and cutting slips that we’re seeing during bad weather are also a cause for concern. Says Prosser: “So, although we saw overall harm reducing by 4%, passenger harm actually went up by 7% when normalised, so we still have things to do. Although there weren’t any industry-caused fatalities, the same challenges also exist on London Underground about managing the growing number of people at stations and particularly

2.0% 1,600

Only fall postprivatisation in 2009-10

1,400

GB Passenger Journeys

1,200

Compared to 1994-95

1,000 800 600

129.8%

Downtown during 1960s coincided with boom in car ownership

Rail industry privatised in 1994-95

400 200

Source: ORR Annual Health and Safety Report, July 2016.

0 1950

‘55

‘60

‘65

‘70

‘75

‘80

‘85

‘90

‘95 2000

‘05

‘10

‘15

Year (calendar year up to and including 1984)

KEY CHALLENGES FOR THE RAILWAY ■■ Managing growth and change - the

growth in passenger numbers and managing transformative railway construction projects puts additional pressure on the industry. ■■ Developing, maintaining and renewing infrastructure - ORR found evidence of a lack of co-ordination in how Network Rail’s strategies and procedures set at the centre are implemented at route and site level. ■■ Translating strategic intent into practical delivery on the ground -

some of the behavioural changes that we’re seeing, like people with mobile devices not looking where they’re going, for example.” This changing risk on the railway is what led Prosser to the four main challenges that he believes the industry is facing (see panel). Because, while significant leaps have been made in the safety arena, the railway is changing. Passenger numbers have increased 129.8% since privatisation and are still rising, we’re building new railways and upgrading infrastructure. All of which bring with them new safety challenges. It all means that maintaining and renewing infrastructure must remain high on the agenda, but that can be difficult when times are tight financially. Says Prosser: “This comes back to the issues around some of the structures and earthworks. I was very pleased to hear that this area is very important to the new Rail Minister. It is a critical factor, because it has a huge impact not just on safety but also

implementation at the point of delivery is uneven within NR. Prosser is looking for consistent and comprehensive followthrough initiatives, conveying concrete results for the benefit of the industry at the front line. ■■ Management of occupational health - while progress has been made, Prosser wants to see greater employee engagement, minimising ill-health ■ costs and improvement in health management competencies in sector managers.

reliability and performance for the passenger. And I think the passenger wants to see reliability above, say, improving a few minutes of journey time. That’s why maintaining and renewing a safe and sustainable infrastructure is so important.” It’s all well and good placing emphasis on safety and ensuring that key areas such as renewals continue, but does that always achieve results on the ground? “From a cultural point of view, there are two really key things. One is making it happen where it matters most - making the connections between the boardroom and the front line to ensure that you see the strategic intent actually delivered on the front line. That’s about safety culture within organisations. And I think a really important aspect of this is making people feel that they’re cared for. “It’s about engaging with the workforce. It’s the people on construction sites, or close to the track, or driving vehicles, who are most

It’s very fitting that this is the first year we haven’t had a workforce fatality in the whole sector. That’s been a long time coming - too long but at least we’ve now got to this point. 45

It’s a credit to the women and men in the industry that we’ve got to where we’ve got to, particularly those on the front line. at risk. And actually getting through to them that we really care and we do want them to go home safe every day. There is no need for anyone to go home harmed from doing a day’s work on the railway.” According to the Annual Health and Safety Report, management of workforce risk is better in other industries than in rail. Why is that? Says Prosser: “They’re just further down the road. I believe the industry and people like NR and others have started on the right road. Mark Carne has come from another sector. We’re behind them, we’re doing the right things, but it does take time. And what we have to do is keep up the momentum. Because it is all about continuous improvement. “When I started at ICI in 1981, they had this in their DNA. So did Du Pont, so did people like Shell later on. It’s just the fact that we didn’t really get going until about ten years ago. And before that, BR did have a few attempts. It brought in Du Pont in the early 1990s but it was stop-start. What you can’t have is a stop-start attitude. You have to keep that momentum.” Back in 2010, ORR launched what was its first health programme, which was a fouryear drive to try to improve the railway’s management of occupational health in the industry. It is now on its second programme, which runs through to 2019, building on the findings of the first. Says Prosser: “As a sector, there’s still a lot more we can do on occupational health. Yes, we’ve come a long way from the programme I set up seven years ago, but really there’s much more we can do.” Prosser says that much of this comes down to delivering excellence. It isn’t about ‘gold-plating’ but about delivering trust. He is encouraging more organisations across the industry to take up the Rail Management Maturity Model (RM3) to help them target and measure their improvements in health and safety. Prosser believes that enforcement action from the ORR should be a last resort to force improvement. One of the areas where continued emphasis on improvement has already produced results is in workforce safety, with the result last year that there were no workforce fatalities. What drove that improvement? “I think the main thing is a better culture within Network Rail, because LU, although it has had some close calls, hasn’t had a workforce fatality for a long time. Though it has to be careful not to become complacent.

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RM3 - RISK MANAGEMENT MATURITY MODEL ORR developed RM3 as a tool for assessing and managing an organisation’s ability to control health and safety risks, to help identify areas for improvement and provide a benchmark for year-on-year comparison. RM3 is helping guide the rail industry to excellence in health and safety risk management. Best-performing companies are those which have fullyintegrated health and safety practices into their culture.   RM3 sets out criteria for policy, governance and leadership, which describe the steps used to evaluate a company’s progress from ad-hoc to excellent safety management capability. It defines what excellent management looks like across these key areas: ■■ Leaders inspiring confidence and commitment, safely taking their teams through periods of change. ■■ Making full use of employees’ potential and actively involving them to develop shared values and a culture of trust, openness and empowerment. ■■ Health and safety policy being used to challenge the organisation to achieve business performance, which is in line with the best-performing organisations. ■■ RM3 has been adopted by the UK railway industry and is also being taken up by the European Railway Agency and being implemented by railways in Hong Kong and Dubai.

A Shinkansen bullet train in Tokyo, Japan. ALAMY.

SAFETY BY DESIGN “But I think it’s NR’s constant drive and focus. And there has been good leadership over recent years from both Sir David Higgins and Mark Carne [previous and current Chief Executive], to actually try to shift this culture.” Prosser says that this is not just about Network Rail, but about the industry as a whole making a continued commitment. The introduction of the first industry Health and Safety Strategy in April is a major step in this area. “It’s the first time it’s happened for the main line railway since privatisation. There used to be an industry safety plan but it was just a list of things to do. This is much more strategic, highlighting the risk areas, areas where they’re not as mature as they believe (like

The subject of safety by design frequently comes up when Prosser talks about the future of safety on the railway. But what does it really mean? “I go back into my past a little bit when I think about safety by design because I spent a long time in the chemical pharmaceutical sector with ICI and it was something that was absolutely drummed into us as young engineers and developing through our early careers that, when you look at doing safety design work, you look at the hazards and you think about elimination. “For example, one of the things we were always taught was, if you don’t need a

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piece of equipment, don’t put it in.” How do you apply that thinking in railway terms? “For one, it’s about how you design stations. Such as how you can encourage people to use lifts by where you put them. The other important area is maintainability. Good safety by design is making it quick and easy to maintain. Or not needing to maintain it at all.” HS2 is already aiming not to have to maintain the railway while trains are running. Prosser says the Japanese network is a good example of safety by design. They design their systems so that the probability of them crashing is virtually zero. “On Shinkansen they’ve had zero fatalities.”

He says this is about taking the time to do the thinking at the beginning, which in some cases comes down to the ORR’s influence as a regulator. “Where projects have run into trouble in recent years is often where there has not been that time to do this thinking up-front, and so you get cost and time overruns. “It’s not just good for safety - you’ll end up doing your project faster and cheaper. Doing that up-front thinking about eliminating hazards, about how people are going to work with the system and how you’re going to maintain it, gets you a better system.” Prosser is quick to emphasise that it is about whole-system rather than silo thinking,

which the Japanese excel at. “A railway is not about running trains, it’s about moving people and goods from ‘a to b’, and the Japanese believe it is very crucial in the design of stations to get your trains on time within a few seconds. They don’t worry about plus or minus ten minutes, they’re worried about plus or minus ten seconds. Thinking about how you design the platforms and how you design the station is really critical to achieving that objective. “Their objective is people mobility. Moving people. It’s not about running a train, it’s thinking ‘I’m in the mobility business.’”

Although we saw overall harm reducing by 4%, passenger harm actually went up by 7% when normalised, so we still have things to do. health and wellbeing). It is about collaboration and cooperation. They’re not hiding from the fact that they need to improve.” So significant progress is being made with people in the industry. But the latest report shows that earthwork failures, such as landslips, increased last year, mainly owing to the very wet weather we experienced. Is this of increasing concern? “I think there is certainly more work on the ground that can be done as Network Rail improves its asset knowledge but it is getting a much better knowledge of its assets. “One thing that has improved a lot, which has meant that in most cases there hasn’t been anything catastrophic happen, is NR’s management to mitigate the risk. It’s not where you’d really want to be, but it is improving in terms of trying to make sure that if something does happen, the consequences are not as severe.” NR has a large programme of work planned over the next ten years for renewing and improving assets. Prosser says it is vital this continues, because the weather will continue to have an impact on their performance. But is he concerned that pressure on the budget will mean this is an area that will be scaled back in the interests of cost-saving? “There has been a tendency to do that

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in the past, but we are very aware as a combined regulator here that we can’t allow them to do it. And we need to make sure that government understands that it is an important area. We’ll be watching that very closely as we come into the next Periodic Review. And we’re watching now in terms of what is being delivered on the ground.” Given that we are safer than our European neighbours, there must be something that sets us apart in safety terms. What is it? Says Prosser: “There has been a lot of work done in recent years in the whole area of human factors. Lots of incidents, even level crossing fatalities, are caused by human factors. Humans are fallible. But if you take that into account in how you design your systems, you start to understand where they may fail and how you can try and get to a place where they’re likely to fail less often. “That’s one of the important things NR is doing with its standards. It had a culture of accepting casual non-compliance against standards. But you can almost see how that has been invited by the complexity of them.” Having a risk-based culture as opposed to a rules-based one is where Prosser says change can be seen. A risk-based culture drives you to think about the human factors and human interactions, and this is what really sets us apart from our European neighbours in many cases and is one of the reasons they look to us for advice. “You have to understand why people don’t follow the rules. If you have a very complex rule for something that is very low risk, you can expect people not to follow it.

From left: Mark Lenderyou, HM Inspector of Railways, ORR HM Chief Inspector Ian Prosser and Rob Fello, MP for Stoke-on-Trent South and a Member of the Transport Select Committee. Fello visited a level crossing in his constituency on August 5 to gain first-hand experience of what ORR does on the ground and to understand key topics from this year’s health and safety report. ORR.

“It’s important to have your rules that people do follow religiously, what NR calls its Life-saving Rules, that are very clear and straightforward, but the rest of it really needs to be risk-based.” Essentially, it is all about having a proportionate way of managing risk. “Yes, safety is all about human beings and how they perform, how they behave. You can use engineering solutions to reduce that, and there’s been some very successful work done in that arena, but you can also look at how you design your systems and processes, taking into account the responses and behaviours of individuals.” Prosser is quick to praise the efforts of many in the industry for seeking improvement both in their organisations and in the wider industry. But he wants more. The moment the industry stops driving for safety improvement will be the moment we head for catastrophe, and the Chief Inspector is determined we don’t let that happen.

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to local residents is key to understanding how a crossing is used and how they feel about it. But first, he tells me how the ORR operates. “Every year we devise a programme of work for the team to go out and inspect. A lot of it is looking at what we call catastrophic risk (passenger risk).” Does the ORR inspect all crossings? “We can’t possibly inspect them all and it’s not our job to do that anyway. It’s not our job to make sure that NR’s crossings are safe. It’s their job to comply with the law. We’re checking their compliance, so it’s one step back. NR has an inspection schedule and they’ll go out and make sure the crossings are in good condition. They also do risk assessments on their crossings, and they’ve diverted much more resource into that now.” If you’re not inspecting them all, how do you decide which crossings to visit? “It’s based on our national view of where NR is in terms of its management of health and safety, and also our local view as well. So when I devise my team plan, I take account of national priorities, for which we have to publish strategies. I also think about what our local priorities are. This year, a lot of our work is in the management of track geometry.” Enough theory. Wake thrusts an open OS map into my lap with pencilled circles marked along the railway line. “Can you read a map?” he asks. Now it all comes down to the trusty OS map to find our crossings. There is no special railway map with every signal, whistle board and warning light marked on it. It’s good old walkers’ territory searching for a suitable place to leave the car, donning walking boots and desperately hoping it doesn’t rain. And, as with any good walk, we quickly discover that some of the more obscure locations can be a challenge to find. It begins with tramping about the countryside looking for ‘railway clues’ to point us in the right direction. Thankfully, the first one is in a residential area and not difficult to spot.

CROSSING 1:

THE AUTOMATIC HALF-BARRIER This type of crossing features an escape route for anyone stuck on the crossing. For example, you might be following a removal lorry that stops at a house just past the crossing (see picture below), trapping you on the crossing. Without a barrier in the way, there’s a way to exit the crossing safely. Which is just as well, because that type of crossing has no safety devices to stop the train coming if the way is blocked, as there would be at many others. Wake says: “These crossings are activated by a train striking a treadle down the line. That gives about 30 seconds warning for the barriers to go down. The obvious risk is that people can simply weave round the barriers. But these level

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calls crossings are very good in this sort of rural location, because they provide minimal interference for traffic, with a downtime of 40 seconds at most). At any other crossing, they could be down for three or four minutes.” The type of crossing at any particular location is based on a compromise and the likelihood of various scenarios. “If a car was to stop on this crossing, the train driver would get no warning until he or she saw the car, by which time it would be too late to stop. That’s what happened in the Ufton Nervet incident [in 2004, an HST collided with a stationary car on a crossing in Berkshire, causing seven fatalities].” Wake starts by checking that the crossing is going through the sequence correctly - the yodel alarm is sounding with the amber light, followed by red flashing lights. He would count the timings if the sequence isn’t right. Next is to look at the conditions. Is it a smooth surface for pedestrians? Is there a grounding risk for vehicles that might trap them on the crossing? The busier a crossing is, the more important these factors become. Wake points out that there is quite a lot of housing here. “If there was a school on one side, the safety of schoolchildren would be a major factor. I’d challenge the suitability of such

I think it’s very important that level crossing closures are a local decision and not something that is simply imposed. Tom Wake , HM Principal Inspector of Railways a crossing if that were the case. There are things that NR could do to make it safer, like installing pedestrian crossing-style signals, with the warnings at eye level.” Schools aren’t the only consideration. The proximity of a sweet shop, a nursery, a nursing home or a pharmacy would also influence the design, as would anything that might attract a higher proportion of more vulnerable people using the crossing. He also considers the relative position of the sun, and whether it might make it difficult to see the lights at certain times. Each crossing has a level crossing order, which NR has to apply for, and the ORR provides it on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport. It gives legal force to all of the signage and the yellow

An automatic half-barrier crossing provides an escape route if a car is stranded on the crossing when the barriers come down.

box markings on the road, for example, so that if someone ignores their warnings, they can be prosecuted. Without the level crossing order, they’re just markings on a road. Wake explains that each order is specific to the crossing it is for. It will specify every line, distance, the location of signs and markings - every last detail. In general terms, you only need a level crossing order if it’s a traffic-type level crossing. Nearly all existing level crossings will have one associated with them. Wake says that ORR’s policy, where at all possible, is to avoid authorising the construction of new level crossings. “We have a safety risk management process in place for dealing with level crossing requests. We examine whether a bridge or an underpass would be more practical. We ask the industry to address those matters first before they consider the level crossing option.” They’re the least favoured option these days, rather than an easy first choice. Wake continues: “There’s an incredibly arcane world of road signage and traffic signs that you have to be familiar with as an inspector. A huge manual has everything in it, with its own reference number.” Even the white lines here have a number in the book of traffic signs. It’s like a long shopping list of crossing accessories, and it’s something every inspector must master. Wake finishes this inspection by taking a few photographs and making some notes about what he sees. For this one, he’s going to recommend that NR repaints the lines because they are wearing away. Otherwise, it all looks good, and we’re off on a short drive to the next one.

CROSSING 2:

A FOOTPATH CROSSING For a moment I forget that I’m on a RAIL field visit, and it feels like Julia Bradbury is going to appear. We follow an overgrown footpath with a stile at the end, surrounded by trees. It’s hard to believe there’s a railway nearby. As we walk towards the stile at the end, Wake starts looking around at the path. “We’re in the growing season but the path is still clear, so this route is obviously used,” he points out. I half expect Wake to produce a deerstalker and magnifying glass from his rucksack. Instead, he whips out a standard issue ORR notebook and pen. “So, first of all I note down where I am and what time it is.” He makes a note of the line speed for the area (75mph in both directions) and describes the spot as “quite rural on the edge of a village”. He stops to listen and determines there are no major sources of background noise. The only thing we can hear are the birds singing in the trees. He takes some photographs and consults the inspection list (see panel). We decide that the likelihood of vulnerable users here is reduced by the need to cross a stile to reach the crossing. Over we go. The first thing to consider is what the decision point is for this crossing. That’s the position at which you stand to make your decision to cross; the equivalent of a kerb on roads. Says Wake: “What I’m focused on is foreseeable human error. When somebody crosses the road, makes a mistake and gets hit by a road vehicle, you could simply say: ‘well that was their own fault for crossing when they shouldn’t’. “I think any sensible accident investigator at a level crossing would ask ‘was it clear’? Did something contribute to their decision to cross? A simple example might be familiarity with a crossing, let’s say on the edge of a town, on a railway line where you don’t often see trains. Or there may be persistent distractions present. It’s not always just a straight lack of attention.” I think we’d all be lying if we said we’d never made a mistake because we were distracted by something that caught our attention at a critical moment. So it’s an inspector’s job to look for ways to avoid potential distraction when we make the decision to cross the railway - as we found out… As we watch in the Up direction, a train passes. While we’re still watching, one thunders past us in the Down direction - not in the direction we’re facing. “What you saw there was a very good

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LEVEL CROSSINGS NEAR YOU There’s a handy search tool on Network Rail’s website that allows you to look up local crossings to find out when they were last assessed, when another assessment is due and how many incidents have been reported at each one. Visit www.networkrail.co.uk/ transparency/level-crossings/

Southern 377405 approaches the footpath crossing. The visibility of the footpath even during the growing season suggests that this route is used by pedestrians. The view from the most likely point at which pedestrians would make the decision about whether to cross the tracks to the other side.

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example of how a crossing can be quite dangerous. Because we were watching that train on the other side and we saw it pass. So you might step out, thinking it’s now safe. But there was another train coming.” Next, we need to decide whether the sighting is good enough from the decision point. Wake will do that by working out how much time is needed to walk across at a steady pace and therefore how far you need to be able to see along the line to know whether it is safe to cross. Out comes the calculator, and he decides that at this one we need 330 metres. It’s much more than that in this direction so Wake is happy that it’s sufficient. Another train passes and sounds its horn. We cross to the other side where there is another stile and fields on the other side, perhaps a smallholding or two. There would be more to consider if this was an area with attractions such as boat yards, pubs, cinemas or even industrial sites, where people might work shifts. The risk would be higher at this crossing at night if that were the case. Wake comments on the skewed nature of the crossing, meaning that it would take longer than necessary to cross it, whereas a perpendicular approach would be the ideal. There are also steps on either side of this crossing, increasing the time required to walk across. “A possible cause of human failure here is that you have to move closer to the railway to make a decision, and you might trip over the steps and fall over. I have to think, what could happen here? It might be more of a

hazard on a wet, windy day, for example. The same situation applies to night time. Happily, however, accidents are very rare at these crossings.” Once again, Wake checks that the sighting is sufficient, this time with his trusty laser sight. He recounts a crossing inspection day last December where there was only one train every hour so it took all day to inspect five crossings in order to check that horns were being sounded correctly. He’ll compile all his findings into a report. One of Wake’s duties is to produce a six-monthly report of his findings and all the photographs he takes become part of a

The stile on the approach to the crossing. This and the steps make the possibility of vulnerable individuals less likely, though not impossible.

central searchable database back at ORR. “As we make our assessments, we hold liaison meetings with NR roughly every quarter, so we would raise ongoing issues at those meetings, or we use e-mail or telephone if it’s an urgent issue. “If I go out today and discover that drivers aren’t sounding the train horns, then my first action will be to ask why. Is there an inaccuracy in our information, or is it something that NR needs to react to?” These inspections help ORR to build

THE INSPECTION LIST At each level crossing inspection, the inspector will check the following particulars against the records held and the actual circumstances: ■■ Crossing name and location ■■ Crossing nature (brief description of asset and environs) ■■ Line speeds ■■ Decision point locations ■■ Traverse distances (actual, compared with that being used to calculate minimum crossing times) ■■ Extent and type of use by vulnerable users ■■ Minimum required warning time and method of calculation, including traverse

speed used ■■ Consideration of vulnerable users in calculation of necessary warning ■■ Whether audibility of horns could be compromised by local factors ■■ Position of whistle boards ■■ Warning time given by train travelling at line speed from whistle board position ■■ Extent to which horns are sounded by drivers of approaching trains ■■ Warning times from trains passing during inspection ■■ Night time quiet period use and risk control ■■ Key outcomes of risk assessment including closure potential

a picture of how NR is managing its crossings. If inspectors are consistently finding the same problems, it might suggest a failure in management somewhere. If they find poorly maintained crossings, it might call into question the inspections that NR is carrying out. “This crossing doesn’t look like it gets much use, but it is reasonably well maintained. If I was to make some improvement suggestions to NR, I might propose a straightening of the crossing. And then we have to consider the cost.” What about the case for closing a crossing like this? NR has closed more than 900 crossings in the past decade and is planning to close another 250. Does ORR think that all crossings should be closed? “As a regulator, we’re concerned with safety. So if anybody asks us about level crossing closures, of course we’re in favour that because it reduces the risk to the public. “But, there’s a very big BUT, which is the local amenity value of crossings. For instance, I’m a keen walker, so I support access to footpaths. So I think it’s very important, when crossings are being considered for closure, that it’s a local decision and it’s not something that is simply imposed because safety is allimportant. Safety is, of course, paramount, but it’s not the be-all and end-all.” Who makes the decision to close a crossing then? “Only a county council can close a footpath crossing, so Network Rail needs to talk to the local authority and agree on a solution with them. This is because it’s the local council’s job to take into account the needs of the local community. I think there’s a bit of a misconception in some places that Network Rail wants to just close everything. That’s not the case, and those decisions do have to be taken at a local level.” If ORR considered a crossing to be particularly unsafe, would the regulator recommend closure? “There are several options that NR can take before it proposes closure. We can’t enforce closure of a crossing - only a local authority can do that. But we can put forward our qualified opinion that while level crossing closures are desirable, it has to be a local decision. “NR can always consider other measures. For example, where you have a whistle board-protected crossing, red and green warning lights might be more suitable. Then there are other technological solutions, such as radar-based warning systems.” There are plenty of examples of these technological advancements at our next crossing.

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Inspectors use a laser sight to determine the distance visible down the track from the ‘decision point’. Wake makes a note of the time it takes to cross so he can calculate the visibility required from the ‘decision point’. Wake marks locations of the crossings to be inspected on an OS map to enable him to find them.

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SPECIAL For each crossing inspection, Wake has a list of specific attributes to check. He then notes all his findings so that he can report back to ORR and give feedback to NR later.

BEING AN INSPECTOR Inspecting level crossings is just a small part of an ORR inspector’s duties. Wake has covered plenty of areas on the railway in his time as an inspector: “I used to head up the team that deals with Transport for London - I did that for five years. They have a completely different set of challenges to NR because they run an integrated railway on the Underground. It’s a very different beast, with very different issues.” Did you prefer it to working with NR? “I liked the fact that it was just me and my team dealing with LU. Now I’m in a larger framework of area teams that all feed into NR. In many ways, LU was easier to influence. being a smaller organisation. NR is a bit of a leviathan. “Having said that, there are different challenges that I quite like on NR, like the track maintenance side of things - getting into the nitty-gritty of engineering keeps me on my toes. Working out how to inspect track management, for example. You have to think about what your criteria would be for what good track management looks like. Do you have the right policy and the right management leadership in place? Do you have the correct standards? If you don’t

know what your criteria to assess look like, there’s no point asking the question in the first place. If I didn’t know what a good crossing looked like, why would I be inspecting it?” But Wake explains that this is not just about looking at a set of rules and deciding whether what you are inspecting is following them. Not everything is black and white, and there are always softer issues to take into account, like culture within Network Rail, and within local communities. “It takes a certain type of person to be an inspector. You need the right mix of people skills and the ability to know your own mind. You need to be able to sit in a room full of people, all of whom disagree with you, and tell them that they are all, in your opinion, completely wrong. “And you need the intellectual ability and fortitude to be able to say ‘no, this is my conclusion. You need to do more to comply with the law’. If you didn’t do that, then you wouldn’t be regulating. You’d be asking questions but then not taking them anywhere. There’s no point asking a question if it doesn’t result in a conclusion. You’re either looking to make a change or give confirmation that everything is OK.”

CROSSING 3:

OBSTACLE DETECTION CROSSING

This one has a footbridge, so we stand on it to get the best view of the crossing. It’s already clear that this one is rather more advanced than the others we’ve seen today. Says Wake: “You see that thing that looks like a giant Tic-Tac? That’s a radar obstacle detection system. So when you hear people referring to an OD crossing, this is what they are talking about.” The giant Tic-Tac does a radar sweep to check if the crossing is clear. If it is, the barriers will come down. If not, it will do another sweep. It will do this three times if necessary. If the crossing is still not clear, it will then alert the signaller (in this case at the local Three Bridges control centre). The radar sweeps at half a metre from the ground, which isn’t very low - a person could crawl underneath that quite easily, or fall over and be missed by the sweep. So there is an upper LIDAR (Laser imaging detection and ranging) and lower LIDAR to fill in the gaps missed by the radar and detect any obstacle up to about eight inches high. The lower scanning was the system that made the headlines back in 2014 (RAIL 740) for detecting a hungry group of crows rummaging through a discarded Kentucky Fried Chicken Bargain Bucket that had blown onto a crossing on the Breckland Line. At the time, the system could only report that ‘something’ was causing an obstruction. Wake explains: “There were a lot of teething problems with this technology that

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OBSTACLE DETECTOR

LIDAR

Our last crossing inspected, notes made, photographs taken and boots suitably muddied, we head back to base. I hadn’t expected that an inspector’s life would involve quite so much time out on the ‘real railway’. Wake reminds me that it’s not always like this. But the time they spend out of the office, seeing how things work in practice is invaluable in ensuring that crossing safety is not just a statistic on paper, but something that protects you and I every time we cross the lines.

LEVEL CROSSING FATALITIES were originally blamed on the KFC container. Many turned out to be problems with the relays from the equipment. They’ve been improved an awful lot since!” Only when the sweeps are completed successfully will the approaching signals clear. “One obvious defect with this type of crossing, where there is a continuous stream of users, is that people realise they can cross unhindered because the barriers won’t come down. If they do come down as people cross, they’ll sense the obstruction and go back up. So people just carry on crossing.” Wake says that CCTV cameras are installed in places where this is likely to occur, to catch people misusing the crossing. Despite having a footbridge, the crossing also features a footpath. People always take the shortest path, so they only use the footbridge when the barriers are down. But, of course, disabled users and those with pushchairs or difficulties using stairs would wait for the barriers to lift anyway. Nothing seems to be wrong with this one, it’s a pretty perfect example of a high-tech solution for a busy location.

2005-06 TO 2015-16 (excluding suicides)

Source: RSSB

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SAFETY IN NUMBERS 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,

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 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

While a growth in passenger numbers is obviously a good thing, it does create challenges for safety performance. GEORGE BEARFIELD, RSSB System Safety Director.

UK RAIL SAFETY: Headline numbers (since 2014/15) 1.69 billion passenger journeys (+2%) 0 passenger or workforce fatalities in train accidents (+0%) 8 passenger fatalities at stations (+266%) 282 fatalities from trespass or suicide (-10%) 3,737 assaults (+20%) 277 SPADs (-8%) Sponsored by

Source: RSSB’s Annual Safety Performance Report 2015/16

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

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This year’s RSSB Annual Safety Performance report confirms that the UK operates one of the safest railway networks in Europe. A VTEC Pendolino approaches Cheddington, Bucks, as it races south towards Euston on February 1. JACK BOSKETT.

Performance 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.

We routinely assess risk and put our funds where they’ll do the most good. GEORGE BEARFIELD, RSSB System Safety Director.

Fatalities per billion train kilometres on the ten largest railway networks in the EU

Source: RSSB

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.”

In safe hands PAUL STEPHEN meets RAIB inspector GRAHAM CLARK to find out how the Rail Accident Investigation Branch has been making our railways safer since 2005

or as long as trains have been carrying passengers, there have been accidents. Indeed, we can go as far back as September 1830, when Liverpool MP William Huskisson became the world’s first railway fatality after being struck by George Stephenson’s locomotive Rocket, at the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. It was a tragic demonstration of the dangers of standing on the tracks - from the very inception of this mode of transport. If it had happened today, investigating the demise of Mr Huskisson would fall under the remit of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB), which is a good deal younger than Stephenson’s pioneering train, having only become operational 11 years ago. Prior to that, accidents were investigated by Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate, which later became part of the Health and Safety Executive. Now, those accidents are investigated by the nation’s railway regulator – the Office of Rail and Road. The Cullen Report into the Ladbroke Grove rail crash of 1999 first mooted the idea of a new agency that was fully independent and complementary to the allied but much older Marine Accident Investigation Branch and Air Accident Investigation Branch. RAIB’s task was to be properly objective, following justifiable criticism of the system it replaced, whereby the HSE – which had both regulatory and investigatory powers - could effectively investigate itself, in cases where it might be at fault for approving inadequate signalling or track layouts, for example.

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Graham Clark, RAIB inspector: “I can’t think of a single case where we’ve not been able to work out what happened”. RAIB.

The extent of RAIB’s role is, therefore, to seek the truth and establish the facts. Crucially, however, it does not apportion blame or liability. Nor does it pursue criminal convictions. This caveat was deemed vital if investigators were to gather every possible piece of evidence. Witness anonymity was considered a necessary requirement to prevent key witnesses refusing to give evidence on the advice of legal representatives, for fear of incriminating themselves. Under the legislation passed to create RAIB (the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003), witness statements, names, addresses or even the fact they’ve been interviewed cannot be shared with third parties. Although the ORR and British Transport Police are unable to access this information and must gather evidence from witnesses independently, all three parties co-operate heavily in other areas. “You’ve got the industry itself, and health and safety law requires them to conduct investigations into accidents that affect their workforce at a basic level,” explains RAIB inspector Graham Clark. “Then you’ve got the police, who must be involved if someone has broken the law, for example at a level crossing, where incidents often involve a violation of the law. “You’ve also got the ORR, which will investigate when it thinks there has been a breach of health and safety legislation and may possibly bring charges. We are there for cases where there’s a lesson to be learned for public safety. We don’t carry out prosecutions (unlike ORR and BTP) - our aim is solely to prevent a reoccurrence, and not to apportion blame. If you think you have a claim against Network Rail for example, because you alone think there’s something wrong with a crossing, then it’s your responsibility to pursue the case. “We have an understanding with ORR that we will work together. We will collect physical evidence and have primacy over that, but we will share that technical evidence with them. Typically, we’ll visit a level crossing and acquire data logger downloads, and the OTMR (On Train Monitoring Recorder) from the train and share all that information. We also have an understanding with the British Transport Police who usually get there before us and take photographs of the scene. We usually ask them to take photographs of certain things for us, and provide a really good set of images.” Graham Clark is one of approximately 20 RAIB inspectors. The branch is headed by Chief Inspector Simon French, and is split over two sites at Farnborough and Derby. There are two principal inspectors at each site who each lead teams of four or five people. There is also a team of between two and four inspectors who are on call to respond to incidents at any time of the day or night, seven days a week. The first point of contact is a duty co-ordinator, whose details are widely circulated to the industry. Typically, the first time RAIB will hear of an incident

is when Network Rail calls the duty co-ordinator from its national operations centre at Milton Keynes. “When it comes to the team that goes on-site, the duty co-ordinator will decide what the response is going to be and who can get there quickest,” adds Clark. “If it’s a long way away, or the railway needs to be re-opened quickly, then we can ask for an accredited agent to be present. These are people in the industry who we’ve trained. They’ll be identifiable by an RAIB armband and will know what to look for. “They’ll go on-site first and will liaise with the duty co-ordinator, acting as our eyes and ears until we can get there. They’ll do stuff like secure the OTMR and make a note of weather conditions, and may even release areas of the site before we’ve even arrived.” Clark is the most deployed of RAIB’s current crop of investigators, having attended 63 accident sites since he was recruited in October 2005. Like most of RAIB’s investigators, he worked for British Rail until the mid-1990s before continuing to work on the railways after privatisation. He says that the number of accident investigations taking place at any one time isn’t consistent, but that the general trend has been a falling number of incidents in the 11 years since the formation of RAIB. However, he’s quick to point out that his workload isn’t getting any smaller, as the initial site visit forms only a very small part of a far more comprehensive and detailed process of investigation. “The output (of accidents) was seven or eight per year in the early days, but that’s down to one or two now and some people have gone for more than a year without going to an incident. I think we’ve become much safer - it was once quite common to be working on two or three investigations at the same time, but as rates have declined we’ve tended to work on them one at a time. “You get an initial rush over the first couple of weeks when you’re collecting data and building a picture of what an investigation’s going to be like. You formulate your plan and then try to piece together a timeline of events. And it might be a lengthy timeline, spanning from when a particular bit of track was renewed or a train was built, to a much shorter one for the days leading up to an accident. “You follow on from that into cause and analysis using recognised techniques that we’ve all learned on a three-year accident investigator course at Cranfield University. We follow that up using our own cause and analysis software that might throw up new lines of inquiry. “You interview witnesses and other people as you find them and work your way up the tree – you start at the bottom, with the guys

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on the ground, and end up with the managers and some quite senior people. “Generally, after three or four months we’ve got a pretty good picture of what caused it and how to stop it in future. Then we hold a final analysis review and get on with writing the report.” Each RAIB report then goes through an exhaustive programme of review and refinement prior to publication. The first step is to present findings and recommendations to industry and key stakeholders for peer review and to gauge initial reaction. Then the draft version of the report must go to ORR as the first stage of formal consultation. “The report goes backwards and forwards quite a lot. ORR will look to see if the recommendations are ones it can enforce or not, so we might end up re-wording them. Then the draft can be distributed to everybody else involved, which includes what the regulations state as ‘anyone whose reputation may be impugned’. Typically, for a level crossing, that would be the train driver, car driver, crossing operator and NR and the TOC corporately – and they all get two weeks to comment on the report. “Then we’d get the relatives (of the deceased or injured) in and give them a presentation and a copy of the report to take

Safety

SPECIAL WHAT DOES RAIB INVESTIGATE? The Railways & Transport Safety Act 2003 requires that RAIB investigates all serious accidents where potential safety lessons can be learned that will improve railway safety and prevent railway accidents and incidents. RAIB also has the legal power to investigate non-serious accidents or incidents for the same purpose. A serious accident means an accident

involving a derailment or collision of rolling stock, which has an obvious impact on railway safety regulation or management of safety and includes such an accident that results in – a) the death of at least one person; b) serious injuries to five or more people; c) extensive damage to rolling stock, the infrastructure or the environment. Source: RAIB

Graham Clark is RAIB’s most deployed inspector, having been called out to 63 incident sites since 2005. He is pictured here on the left, on a training day at the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, held on August 5. RAIB. Level crossings continue to pose a major risk to the railway. New and brighter LED units were installed at all crossings on RAIB’s recommendation, following a fatal collision at Beech Hill in December 2012 when a motorist failed to see warning lights against the bright midday sun. RAIB.

The high-speed derailment at Grayrigg, Cumbria, in February 2007 is, thankfully, the only train accident to have led to the death of a passenger since the formation of RAIB 11 years ago. RAIB.

away which, at this stage, is still marked as confidential. “Finally, we address every individual comment and answer it. There’s an internal review process covering how much we’ve changed the report and only when that’s done can we approve the final version for publication. “Regulations say this should ideally be done within a year, but we’ve been looking to push that down.” Clark is currently assigned to the RAIB investigation into an injury sustained by a trackside worker on the Midland Main Line in Leicestershire in February, when a train struck equipment used for loading raw materials at Mountsorrel Quarry. He says that the report is due to go out to consultation later this month, and should be published in October after a span of just eight months. Looking back at all the investigations that RAIB has been involved in, Clark highlights two in particular – Grayrigg and Beech Hill. The high-speed derailment on the West Coast Main Line at Grayrigg in Cumbria in February 2007 remains the only accident leading to the death of a passenger on a train since RAIB became operational, while the death of a car passenger at a level crossing at Beech Hill on the Doncaster-Gainsborough line in December 2014 led to some of RAIB’s most far-reaching recommendations. He adds: “Grayrigg was the last fatal accident involving a passenger, but we’ve had some since with the public at level crossings and trackside workers. And we continue to investigate some frightening near-misses involving track workers. “Beech Hill was the level crossing where we recommended getting rid of old lamps

and replacing them with more modern LEDs. That has affected all of Network Rail’s level crossings as hundreds of them still used the old 36W bulbs. Replacing them with new and brighter LED units will bring improvements to crossing safety, because a lot of level crossing incidents were being attributed to drivers ignoring the warning lights. But the investigation at Beech Hill concluded that the driver approached the crossing at a certain time of day, when the sun was right in the person’s eyes, compounded by the fact that they couldn’t see the lights because they were too dim in the daylight. “That report has therefore undoubtedly saved lives and led to a big change.” In 2015 alone, RAIB attended the scenes of 32 incidents, published 20 reports and made 74 recommendations. Now in his eleventh year as an investigator, is there anything that still has the capacity to surprise Clark? “Yes,” he concludes. “The human factor. “I can’t think of a single case where we’ve not been able to work out what happened but sometimes it’s difficult to work out why a person took a certain course of action, and we have to propose two or three possibilities. “People will always be an unpredictable factor.”

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Why NR’s breathing easy NICOLA ATKINSON, rail account manager at ESG, explains how the company has helped Network Rail to ensure optimum workplace health and safety for its track maintenance teams

he UK rail sector not only prides itself on providing a safe environment for passengers, but also for those behind the scenes, maintaining stations, rolling stock and the track. Managing hazards, including those posed by poor air quality, has always been a key priority. One example of this is when Network Rail (NR) needed to be sure that the air remained clean and free from dust and fumes inside its new fleet of mobile maintenance trains (MMTs). These self-propelled units are designed to provide a safe and well-lit environment for workers, shielding them from weather and passing trains while they work on the track. The MMTs are designed to operate either with the sides in an open position, to provide additional space for large equipment, or with the sides fully deployed, to provide maximum protection.

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Network Rail’s mobile maintenance fleet is fully compliant with UK workplace dust and fumes exposure limits owing to a ventilation system fully tested by ESG. NETWORK RAIL.

ESG performed monitoring on each person operating within the MMTs during work activities. In any enclosed space, dust and fumes are significant health and safety issues, unless suitable precautions are taken. The build-up of dust and fumes can become particularly acute during track maintenance work when cutting, grinding and welding of rails release potentially toxic fumes. Drilling into concrete sleepers and stone ballast can also lead to a large build-up of particulates. Exposure to these fumes can cause irritation to the eyes, nose and chest in the short term, while dust can lead to breathlessness. In the long term, both hazards can cause chronic respiratory illnesses. Under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations, organisations operating in all sectors have a legal obligation to assess and minimise the risks posed to employees from dust, fumes and other hazardous substances. To design a solution to enable NR to meet these regulatory requirements for its fleet of MMTs, ESG undertook comprehensive air monitoring on behalf of NR at the vehicle manufacturer’s site in Austria. Air monitoring and occupational hygienists investigated internal dust and metal fume levels produced by welding and other similar

heavy-duty work in order to ensure the MMTs were provided with sufficient ventilation to facilitate high-intensity maintenance. ESG also performed monitoring on each person operating within the MMTs during work activities to determine background air quality levels for other people working in the unit at the same time. Tests were repeated for each MMT with the sides both open and fully deployed to provide useful air quality comparisons in all possible operational scenarios. All of the work was completed in situ, with the MMTs deployed on an Austrian test track. ESG’s hygienists liaised regularly with NR to maximise monitoring efficiency and ensure optimum test precision. The results of the tests successfully demonstrated that the ventilation systems within all the units were effective enough to minimise internal dust and metal fume levels, even with their sides fully extended and during high-intensity metal-working. Due to this analysis, NR now has the confirmation it needs that its MMTs comply with UK workplace exposure limits, and that its high standards of worker health and safety are being upheld.

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IT’S NO ACCIDENT Kelvin TOP-SET MD DAVID RAMSAY tells RAIL why the company is the leading authority in incident investigation

here’s much to be said for subscribing to the age-old maxim of learning from your mistakes. And while this isn’t stated verbatim in the official mission statement of the 30-year-old international company Kelvin TOP-SET, it is the most accurate summary of its purpose. Set up by Ramsay in 1986, it teaches other companies how to investigate incidents, understand what causes them and prevent any recurrence. By showing its clients how to follow a clear, logical process to find the root causes of health and safety related incidents, it improves efficiency and, most importantly, protects people’s lives. Kelvin TOP-SET does this by offering three products - educational courses, software solutions and an investigation service. The company conducts about 60% of its business in the UK, but its services and products are also available as far afield as Australia, Russia, the USA and the Middle East. Its biggest clients include global brands such as Maersk, Tata Steel, Shell and Petronas, but 20% of its customers operate in the rail sector, including Amey and Transport for London. Ramsay explains: “Most of our clients are big companies, but our methods and services work for the very smallest of businesses. A large company might completely book out one of our courses, whereas a smaller one might send just one or two people. “What we do is very important, because there’s no room for complacency. Things are changing all the time and technology can always go wrong in new and unforeseen ways. “Relative to the rest of the world, health and safety in Britain is very good, but it’s important Sponsored to keep anby eye on

the small things to prevent worse things from happening.” The Kelvin TOP-SET methodology can be applied to minor incidents or near-misses, but is fully scalable up to catastrophic incidents that have led to loss of life or large-scale economic and environmental damage. In fact, the company were hired to help investigate the causes of the largest oil spill disaster in US history in 2010, when an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 people and caused immeasurable damage to the environment. But it is more often applied to less significant events, such as trips, falls or near-misses, where more targeted lessons can be learned to reduce individual risks of recurrence. As investigating serious accidents and incidents such as main line derailments has been the responsibility of the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) since 2005, the Kelvin TOPSET methodology is most frequently employed to study incidents that are outside this remit. This might be a collision resulting in minor damage to rolling stock, or

Kelvin TOP-SET has been teaching its clients to carry out effective incident investigation, helping to increase employees’ safety awareness and understanding since 1986. KELVIN TOP-SET.

injury to four or fewer people, or where safety issues are deemed too localised to warrant an industry-wide investigation. Ramsay adds: “If there is a serious accident, it is the duty of RAIB to investigate. But other companies might use us in a consultative capacity, to teach them how to avoid risks. “The sort of thing we might look at is a shunting error, the potential for a derailment, or perhaps an incident in a depot that would not warrant the involvement of the RAIB. “Our clients are often looking to take preventative measures to enhance their safety performance, as they tend to be far more proactive these days than reactive, as we were in the past. “The perfect outcome of using our services would be if there were no more incidents that got as far as the RAIB. “There are only a few companies in the world doing what we do, and we would rank ourselves as the best. We’ve been around for a long time and have spent a lot of money on product and service development to build up such a strong reputation.”

It’s important to keep an eye on the small things to prevent worse things from happening. DAVID RAMSAY, Kelvin TOP-SET MD

Exporting expertise Three ORR inspectors share their experiences of exporting UK safety knowledge around the globe

t’s said that experience comes with age and, with nearly 200 years of railway history, Britain has certainly accumulated an enviable amount of knowledge and knowhow on the subject - particularly when it comes to improving performance in areas such as safety. We are, justifiably, proud of our railway safety record, but the impressive statistics also attract the interest of other countries who wish to learn from our example. Naturally, they look to the safety regulator for that expertise, and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has now helped many other nations, such as Dubai and Singapore, by sharing safety regulation knowledge. ORR doesn’t advertise or seek out this type of work, because the regulator already has its work cut out with our own railway, but Director of Railway Safety and Chief Inspector of Railways Ian Prosser is firmly of the opinion that helping other countries is just as beneficial to us as it is to them. “Observing how other cultures work gives my inspectors a different view of how we can implement a more safety-conscious culture through a regulatory process, which is beneficial to UK plc in the long term.” Whereas in the UK ORR inspectors have legal power, abroad they are just there in an advisory capacity, which Prosser says gives them an opportunity to improve their influencing and people skills. “Many of the countries we have worked in have the latest technology, so it gives the inspectors a chance to experience more advanced systems.” Exporting its skills may be a lower priority for ORR at present, but experience abroad is playing a vital role in developing our own safety capability. More than that, it is providing a showcase for UK rail expertise on the world market.

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Abu D

Dubai Metro on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai City. ALAMY.

DUBAI Dubai is known for its luxury shopping districts and impressive skyscrapers. But its metro system is a relatively new addition. The driverless, fully-automated railway opened in September 2009 and is still undergoing extensive expansion from the current 46-mile (74km) length. The regulator has had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Dubai since 2008 to assist with internal regulation of their operations, offering advice and assistance on railway safety matters. In effect, ORR helps the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority to fulfill their regulatory functions for the United Arab Emirates government. HM Inspector of Railways Umar Ali was one of two inspectors who went over to Dubai in September 2012 to carry out an audit of the metro’s safety management system. Says Ali: “It’s good to experience railways that are different to the one we work on, which is an established railway. Places like Dubai and Etihad (see ‘Abu

Dhabi’, page 70) have new railways with different operational arrangements and different technologies. And it’s good to be able to apply the same principles. But while they’re learning from us, we also learn, so it benefits both parties.” Tom Wake, HM Principal Inspector of Railways, was the inspector who produced the final report from the visit. He explains: “They were building an expanding railway and installing a tram system, and the number of people using it is increasing. But they didn’t have the regulatory experience or the inspectors to call upon to ensure compliance with their laws, or to enforce good health and safety practice by the various parties involved.” The ORR was able to provide that assistance and, under the memorandum of understanding, two inspectors go out to Dubai each year to carry out an audit and report back to the Dubai transport authority on progress.

Dhabi

Safety

SPECIAL Tom Wake (third from right) meets senior EMSD managers in Hong Kong. ORR.

HONG KONG The former British colony of Hong Kong is a densely populated city in south-eastern China, with a population of more than seven million people. Operated by MTR, it has more than 100 miles of railway. The ORR’s involvement with the railway came about through a slightly complex arrangement. MTR is a member of APTA (the American Public Transportation Association), which includes in its membership deal the opportunity for APTA to carry out a health and safety audit for its members. In 2014, MTR requested that the audit team included someone with regulatory experience, who was used to enforcing law. So APTA called on the ORR for assistance. Tom Wake, HM Principal Inspector of Railways, spent a month on secondment to perform the audit, looking at everything from train operations to rolling stock and track maintenance. While Wake was in Hong Kong, he visited the city’s equivalent of the ORR - the EMSD (Electrical and Mechanical Services Department), which was interested in how the ORR is organised. Says Wake: “There’s a lot of political interest in the railways in Hong Kong. The EMSD is sometimes asked questions by the Chinese government about what they do and how they approach inspection. They were very interested in how we regulate Network Rail and London Underground and what things we look at. “In Hong Kong, the tendency there was for the regulator to go out and physically check things. For instance, they’d physically check the insulators on overhead line to make sure they weren’t cracking and they weren’t about to break down and cause delays. They were

very interested to hear that we don’t do that in this country. We inspect the systems that underlie the maintenance and procurement of those key components. But we do carry out spot checks on the physical installation, just to gather some real-world intelligence.” Wake says the visit strengthened the ties between the ORR and the EMSD and allowed them to share their methodologies and priorities. He believes that it is the regulatory system within the ORR that drives people to ask for advice. “In Hong Kong, they were interested in learning how we define our priorities and how we put them into practice - it’s a mixture of inspection, interview and documentary evidence. While I was there, they took the opportunity to pick my brains. They weren’t stuck for ideas, but they were keen to see what a well-known and robust regulatory system looks like. And that’s how the UK system is perceived around the world.” Wake said that going to Hong Kong reminded him of the value of team inspections, where a group of inspectors goes out on the same type of inspection for a week and then come together to discuss the findings. “The inspection generates its own momentum. Working on the same thing for a few days encourages a crossfertilisation of ideas. In Hong Kong, I was one of a 12-person team carrying out the inspection and we would meet at the end of every day and discuss our findings. At the end of four weeks we all sat down and wrote up the report together. We’re going to do that in the UK this year.”

A busy station in Hong Kong’s morning peak. TOM WAKE.

STAGE 3 STAGE 2

Abu Dhabi

STAGE 1 United Arab Emirates

ABU DHABI The Gulf states are enjoying a railway renaissance. A new railway has been proposed to stretch across the peninsula, through Abu Dhabi to connect Saudi Arabia, through the United Arab Emirates, and all the way to Turkey (see map). In February 2014, the ORR went out to Abu Dhabi to help developer Etihad Rail with a readiness review for stage one of the ambitious project (to build a freight line to carry sulphur). Stage two will extend the line and stage three will introduce passenger services. HM Inspector of Railways Umar Ali carried out the readiness review. “When you set up a new system, you can start with a clean slate with all the latest technology, whereas, when we look at things like ERTMS [European Rail Traffic Management System], we have to map it across the old railway system, do a bit of shadow running and then take the old system out. In Abu Dhabi, they have an all-new control centre, new trains, new signalling systems. It gives us an opportunity to learn and see how new systems are put into practice. And the safety principles are the same.” There are specific ways that the

ORR can provide assistance with these new systems. For example, Ali said that sulphur was not regarded as a dangerous goods item and he was able to explain how we treat dangerous goods on the railway in the UK. He says this is sometimes just about having a fresh pair of eyes. Ali was keen to point out just how much the UK can learn from these experiences, however: “They were using derailment detectors, which monitor axle vibrations and warn the driver if the train has derailed. This is something we didn’t have in this country. Sometimes it can take a long time for a driver to become aware that the back of a train has derailed. So I highlighted that when I came back.” Ali did a follow-up review for Etihad Rail in June this year (they’re now at stage two of the project). Unbelievably, Ali said Etihad Rail intends to complete this ambitious 750-mile (1,200km) railway by 2027… Compare that with the 119-mile (192km) HS2 Phase 1 that will reach Birmingham just one year earlier.

HM Inspector of Railways Umar Ali. STEFANIE BROWNE.

Sponsored by The new financial and business district Abu Dhabi Global Market square in February. ALAMY.

A US-built Etihad Rail EMD SD70ACS locomotive. ORR.

Singa

Safety

SPECIAL

It gives us an opportunity to learn as well and see how new systems are put into practice. TOM WAKE, HM Principal Inspector of Railways

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Marina Bay, Singapore ALAMY.

MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE One of the most ambitious overseas projects with which the ORR has been involved in recent years is the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail project, which is intended to follow a similar timeline as HS2 in the UK, with work starting in 2017 and completion in 2026. The 220-mile (350km) railway will be mainly on the mainland, with a fixed link (probably an undersea tunnel) to Malaysia. Because of that tunnel, Head of Railway Safety Policy Martin Jones was called in to offer regulation advice in June this year. He and his team work with colleagues in France to regulate the Channel Tunnel, which was a very similar project. “What they were particularly interested in was governance structures. How did we go about setting up the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission and safety authority? What sort of competence does it have? How do we operate it? What are the big challenges? What should it not cover, what should they reserve for themselves? And what they might do domestically in terms of regulatory frameworks.” Jones and a colleague saw both the Malaysians and Singaporeans separately before spending time with the two together. Jones explains: “We did a half-day workshop with the Malaysians to get them to think about their needs, expectations and concerns about this kind of bilateral governance

Kuala Lumpur

structure, and then did the same with the Singaporeans for half a day. We then got them all together to summarise for them what we’d heard and just to get them talking to each other. “There are differences between their project and what we’re doing, but the sense is the same and the key principles that they need to establish, like an equal partnership, are comparable.” Like Abu Dhabi, what Malaysia and Singapore need is neutral advice that they can both trust. Jones says that the UK makes a good choice because we have no hard commercial interest in the railway. He says: “One of the things that really struck me is the extent to which we have come to rely on Europe to do a lot of the detail for us in terms of legislation and regulation. But also it’s a bit intangible. It gives you a fresh perspective on what you’ve done, when you talk to people whose background and experience is totally different but who know about the subject. They ask you searching questions that make you reflect on why you’ve done things a certain way. They have none of the historical baggage.”

Head of Railway Safety Policy, Martin Jones. STEFANIE BROWNE.

PROPOSED HIGH SPEED RAIL STATIONS Proposed HSR Route Ayer Keroh

Batu Pahat

Singapore Singapore

Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). ALAMY.

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