Learning from the nuclear industry
RSSB Board member John Clarke tells us 'safety is not about policing but enabling'.
John ClarkeNon-Industry, Non-Executive Director, RSSB
John Clarke worked for 35 years in the nuclear industry, until 2017. This included being Head of Environment, Health, Safety and Quality at Sellafield. He’s been a Non-Executive Director of RSSB since 2017.
Much of your background is in the nuclear industry. As a relative newcomer to rail, what was your perception of the sector?
Almost all my perception was based on my experience as a passenger, which often involved delays and cancellations. As a frequent traveller from Cumbria to London I also tried driving and flying on the same routes, but saw the problems with those. Flying short distances is particularly bad from a sustainability perspective. So this all gave me the impression of a system that wasn’t quite working. At the same time, I saw how efficient rail services actually are, despite the delays. For instance, Google Maps might say five and a half hours to drive, but it would be anything up to nine hours.
Why did you decide to become an RSSB Board member?
It was the ‘safety thought leadership’ element that grabbed me because I come from a safety-critical industry and was director of safety at Sellafield for quite a long time.
I’m actually an operator by background. I was the first non-safety professional to become the director of safety at Sellafield. I thought the role of the safety director was very much about safety thought leadership. My view was that if we ever stopped a job that was a system failure, because what we should have done is spot a way of enabling the job to be done safely. Safety is not about policing but enabling.
We’ve just entered a new financial year and launched our 2024–2025 Annual Business Plan. How will the board ensure its success?
Mark Phillips (Chief Executive) and the team have done a really fabulous job in terms of the structure and style of the 2024-25 Annual Business Plan, in addition to the content. Focusing on the big six challenges that the industry faces, and how RSSB can help, is very good.
The beauty of our position is that it’s across the industry, so the smaller voices do get heard.
Delivery, and explicitly measuring and articulating member benefits from the things we’re doing, is also essential. For instance, I sometimes hear ‘standards drive up costs’, when actually they were created for precisely the opposite reason. We need to quantify our benefit in pounds.
I also really like the strategic multipliers, where we can collaborate across business areas to generate more value.
Drawing on your experience in managing expenditure in several nuclear businesses, what advice do you have for rail leaders with cost reduction top of mind?
It’s important that our goal of cost reduction doesn’t lead to poor decisions from a safety or operational perspective. In a cost-cutting environment, it’s absolutely critical that you’ve got a proper change management process in place. Cost-cutting needs thinking through properly. Like the adage says, I’ve never seen a company that’s solely cost-reduced its way to success. Stopping itself from going out of business, yes, but not paving the way to success.
As you know, the sustainability perception of nuclear power has changed over the years. Now, as part of the net zero carbon agenda, nuclear power is seen far more positively. How can rail take advantage of this increasing emphasis on sustainability?
Rail is really well placed for sustainability. It’s already a demonstrably efficient means of transporting people and goods around the country, much more so than cars or lorries. It’s not as convenient if you’re going from your house, but it is the most sustainable means of mass transport. In rail, we’re already focused on reducing emissions using electric trains and different types of traction.
In short, rail and sustainability absolutely go hand in hand, and the more we can invest in rail and transport on rail, the better.
Are there similarities between rail and nuclear? Is there anything the rail industry could learn from the nuclear industry?
There are some very significant similarities. They have the potential, on occasions, to have big events that have very significant consequences—consequences that may be seen disproportionately in a wider context. In Hatfield and Ladbroke Grove, about 20 people lost their lives. That’s comparable to about two weeks of road deaths. It doesn’t make them less tragic, but given the rarity of fatal rail accidents in the UK, the focus on them may be disproportionate.
So, I’m planning to share with Tom Lee, RSSB’s Director of Standards, some experiences from the nuclear industry on how you measure and mitigate risks that are incredibly low frequency but very high consequence. These sorts of risks don’t really lend themselves to traditional risk management measures. You can normally use a ‘Monte Carlo simulation’ that estimates the risks from 10,000 event simulations but you can’t do this with ‘black swan’ events.
Also, although an actual nuclear reactor is different from the rail network, both industries revolve around people doing stuff. I think any industry should be open to learning from others. That didn’t use to be the case in the nuclear industry, and it’s getting better in rail.
What’s your perspective on rail reform?
We do need some real reform and from what I hear it looks to be heading in the right direction. Less fragmentation and all players in the industry understanding their roles as part of a wider system should lead to benefits to all users.
What is rail’s greatest underappreciated strength?
I thought about this question a lot. In my view, it’s freight. When you think about the amount of stuff that moves on the railways, if all of that was on the roads—the fumes, the congestion, the carbon use—the frustration would all be so much more. It would be great if rail freight were used more. But what it does is already impressive, and it needs to be recognised far more, both inside the industry and in wider society.
