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| DEPOTS
Staying safe driving in depots Dr Stephen Fletcher, Director and psychologist at the Occupational Psychology Centre (OPC) shares some job analysis work that has helped to identify key Non-Technical Skills (NTS) for safe and effective depot driving
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e don’t need to tell you that train depots can be very busy places! Trains may be there for a variety of different reasons – they may be in for routine maintenance or an emergency repair; fault diagnosis or brake/ wheel checking, or they may simply be there for a wash! Activities in the depot, can be very varied. Each day may not be the same twice. During a shift, a depot driver may need to move a train across a number of different locations in the depot. They may need to move a number of engines to different areas of the depot in a scheduled and orderly fashion. Moves may simply be driving one locomotive to an area or it may be more complicated with the driver having to move more than one engine, like pieces in a puzzle, in order to get the required traction into the right place for the job needed. A day’s schedule may be very efficiently mapped out, which is great, but if an emergency maintenance job comes in then the whole schedule and system of moving various trains may need to be re-thought and re-scheduled. Due to the functional nature of a depot, there may also be a number of different teams working there – drivers, engineers, maintenance crews etc. Different safety critical employees can undertake numerous safety tasks. It can be dangerous and the consequences of errors can still be enormous. All in all, it can be a hive of activity and a very demanding place to work and drive in. So, if we need our depot drivers to be safe and effective, then what are the key NTS they need to demonstrate their day-to-day work? So, what do depot drivers need for safe and effective performance? OPC psychologists undertook job analysis for the depot driver role with two separate UK train operating companies. With the first train operator, job experts with indepth knowledge of the depot driver role Rail Professional
were asked to rate the importance of 26 NTS to the role. Working alongside a second train operator, in conjunction with an in-depth role profiling exercise, a critical incident technique was also used. This involved identifying occasions when drivers had performed both very well and other occasions when they may have performed poorly with safety incident consequences – this technique helped to identify behavioural indicators that are important to display (or not) to be safe and effective in the role. OPC psychologists analysed the outputs from the job experts at the first train operator and ranked the NTS in order of importance (see chart). Work alongside the second train operator confirmed and enriched these findings. The chart below shows the top five ranked NTS:
drivers. A depot driver needs to stay constantly focused whilst moving trains around the depot. They need to be watching for signals; aware of what is going on around them and people working nearby, as well as being able to deal with repetitive tasks without losing concentration. As with other key safety critical roles the NTS of ‘maintaining concentration’ is crucial to safe performance. The next three NTS were equally rated by job experts at 93 per cent importance. The NTS of ‘attention to detail’ is rated as key to depot driving. Depot drivers need to make sure they attend to the detail of their tasks incorporating information they have been given about where to move trains from and to. They need to adhere to depot speeds, pay absolute attention to their instructions, as well as work with signal and
These top NTS are based on the research published by the RSSB 2012 ‘Research Programme. Operations and Management. Non-technical skills for rail: A list of skills and behavioural markers for drivers, with guidance notes’.
Top five NTS for safe and effective depot driving The results from our job experts indicated that the NTS of ‘maintain concentration’ was rated as most important for depot
road numbers. Because of the busy nature of a depot and its daily variations, a safe and effective depot driver cannot be complacent, relying on what they ‘usually’ do. Neither can they depend on habit i.e., that train
