Network Rail is deploying a multi-faceted approach to improving track worker safety, following a number of tragic deaths on the country’s railways.
In board minutes from May – but just made public – Network Rail’s Track Worker Safety Task Force set out measures that are being rolled out to improve the safety of rail workers.
Retraining 14,000 controllers of site safety, driving behavioural changes by rewarding good behaviour and eliminating human lookouts are among the new measures.
A controller of site safety or COSS is a person qualified by the British company Network Rail to ensure safe practice for work occurring on or near rail infrastructure. Their primary role is to set up a safe system of work to protect staff from trains and trains from staff and activities.
The minutes add: “The Board discussed progress towards changing the attitude to safety amongst those on the frontline.
“One aspect of reinforcing the priority of colleague safety, was to re-certify the competence of 14,000 Controllers of Site Safety. A formal assessment was testing both technical and non-technical skills.”
As previously revealed by NCE, Network Rail is accelerating plans to replace all human lookouts on the railway with alternative technologies.
The decision to accelerate plans to eliminate human lookouts was taken following the death of Tyler Byrne in South-East London in February.
The May board minutes add: “Following the tragic death of Tyler Byrne on 9 February 2021, each route accelerated its plans to stop, insofar as possible, people working on or close to open railways with human forms of lookout warning.
“Those plans were peer reviewed and suggested that unassisted lookout warning methods could be reduced to 1-2% of planned maintenance by 31 July 2021 and eliminated by 31 December 2021.
“The Lookout Operated Warning System (LOWS) working would reduce over the same period but was dependent on deploying a replacement semi-automatic track warning system.
“The accelerated reduction in unassisted lookout and LOWS had the potential for transferring risk. However, the hazard identification approach, facilitated by the Rail Safety and Standards Board, provided a framework to identify, control and mitigate those risks; and to continually monitor the potential for risk transfer. Leading indicators were in place to highlight emerging risks.”
Byrne’s death was just the latest incident of a rail worker being struck by a train in recent years. Another track worker was killed while carrying out civil engineering tasks near Roade in Northamptonshire on 8 April last year, which followed the double fatality in Margam in July 2019.
Among its findings, the RAIB concludes that AmcoGiffen employee Aden Ashurst had become “habituated to warnings from approaching trains” and therefore “did not look towards the approaching train on hearing its warning horn”.
Speaking to NCE in June last year, Haines stressed the importance of changing worker behaviours and mentality towards safety, labelling it as “the big nut to crack”.
In the latest board minutes, Network Rail reveals its plans to reward good behaviour in order to encourage a change in mindset.
The minutes add: “The Board discussed […] the role of ‘carrot and stick’ in changing behaviour, noting that changes sometimes only happened through incentives or consequences.
“Given the fact that a significant majority of work on the railway was not directly supervised it was felt that whilst there must be significant consequences for gross violations or repeated safety breaches, an over reliance on “the stick” would yield limited results and hence the need for every team member to take personal responsibility for their own safety as well as that of their team-mates.”
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