FATIGUE

The Health and Safety Advisory Conference afternoon session focused on the conference theme of fatigue. Current figures suggest that just 41% of us are getting 6 hours of sleep, or less, when working days but that this figure rises dramatically to 63% for those who work at night.

Conference heard from Shelly Asquith from the TUC about what makes workers fatigued and what are the risks? Nicola Healey, from the HSE (Health and Safety Executive) is a Senior Human Factors Specialist who spoke about what is fatigue and how it can impact on safety? Also, we heard from Anna Vereker who is a Principal Human Factors Specialist from the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) about managing fatigue.

The panel spoke about industry challenges such as effectively managing shift work, fatigue risk and software shift modelling and fatigue-risk modelling products. The RSSB encouraged RMT participation and to promote their fatigue survey. Following these presentations many questions were asked from the floor for the panel on fatigue related factors.