Fatigue risk management
By tackling fatigue, we can improve the health and wellbeing of the workforce as well as everyone’s safety.
Fatigue continues to be a key safety consideration. It’s been listed as a causal factor in several accidents, including Clapham in 1988. Fatigue can amplify other safety risks across all areas of rail transport, as well as other activities, such as work-related road driving. The data in Network Rail’s Close Call reporting system shows that there were over 1,200 Close Calls records that related fatigue in 2022/23, making up almost 1% of all Close Calls reported into the system (see chart). This is a reduction since a peak in 2020/21, likely linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The RAIB report into the Kirkby buffer stop collision, which was published this year, observed that the operator’s fatigue risk management system did not follow industry guidance and good practice. RSSB has supported the industry’s efforts to tackle fatigue risk through publishing guidance on helping employees manage fatigue risk while on call. This includes a self-assessment tool developed by RSSB and endorsed by the ORR to help staff make informed decisions about their ability to safely carry out work duties or drive.
The Infrastructure Safety Leadership Group’s (ISLG) fatigue working group has developed guidance on encouraging staff to report fatigue-related concerns. Collecting accurate data from staff on fatigue helps organisations understand and manage fatigue risk better.
Following the fatal tram accident at Sandilands Junction in 2016, technologies have been trialled within the GB tram sector to monitor driver alertness and attention (including fatigue). RSSB’s project to understand the functional requirements for train driver attention and alertness monitoring will help build the GB heavy rail’s understanding of these issues, along with the science and evidence behind them. This will help determine how these devices could be used to improve the understanding and management of issues like fatigue.
The link between heat and fatigue is well known, but fatigue can be exacerbated by not hydrating adequately, a fairly likely scenario if, for example, no rest facilities are available. RSSB has produced guidance on the provision of welfare facilities for rail workers to help the industry meet the needs and requirements of the workforce and remove barriers to optimal hydration.
CIRAS has seen a steady rise in the number of fatigue-related reports since the pandemic, with 22 in 2022/23 compared to 12 and 16 in 2020/21 and 2021/22, respectively.
One reporter to CIRAS raised concerns about the accurate recording of staff working hours. For example, due to hours being recorded on sheets of paper and not electronically, there are concerns that this method may not be accurately capturing the time between shifts or the time it takes staff to commute to/from the site.