Safety on track: key takeaways from the 2024 conference
Risk reduction comes down to ‘time, effort, and leadership’. That was one of the take-home messages from our fourth annual Operations Risk and Safety Conference. Catch up on all the highlights here.
‘In trying to improve safety, it’s not all about money. It’s about time. It’s about effort. It’s about leadership.’
Mike McCartain OBE’s opening messages at last month’s Operations Risk and Safety Conference were clear. It will take those three things to keep strengthening our industry’s safety record.
Mike is the Associated British Ports’ Group Director for Safety, Security, Environment, Engineering, and Marine. And his speech kickstarted our fourth annual Operations Risk and Safety Conference.
The programme boasted a hugely diverse selection of topics. From removing detonators to managing disruption, and risk perception to overspeeding, the day was chock full of wisdom.
And with presentations from LNER, Network Rail, East Midlands Railway, GWR, Freightliner, and many others, the conference saw a true coming-together of industry’s thought leaders.
We’ll take you back over some of those sessions, pulling out the take-home messages for your organisation.
In the morning, Ian Cuthbertson brought delegates up to speed on what’s been happening with the phasing out of detonators. Ian is a Senior Operations Standards Manager at LNER.
Citing supply, cost, disposal, and the introduction of more modern methods of working as key issues with their continued use, Ian spoke about some of the work taking place to review the current rules in place. He also discussed what might be next for these historic devices.
He said leaning into more modern technologies will likely be best for optimising train protection and reducing risk.
After this, a session presented by own our Clare Forshaw, Principal Strategy Implementation Manager, and EMR’s Tracy Orlandi, Head of Wellbeing and Occupational Health, made clear that industry needs to manage health with the same high standards as it does safety. They said doing this will ensure a strong and sustainable future for GB rail.
Clare and Tracy also spoke about how ‘health has to be addressed in all aspects’ of the new Rail Health and Safety Strategy. In addition, they touched on how improving health surveillance at all levels of the industry will be key for keeping rail workers, rail users, and the wider community safe and healthy.
Later, Steven Van Niekerk—Network Rail’s Head of Health, Safety, and Environment—delivered a stark message: when it comes to health and safety, what was OK yesterday won’t be OK tomorrow.
Steven illustrated this with a ‘terrifying’ BBC clip of an ascent of Nelson’s Column, showing what was considered acceptable from a health and safety perspective in 1977. Building on this, he discussed the importance of understanding how risk—and what we consider to be acceptable—evolves over time. And he said we need to start acting now in order to prepare for our future railway.
Closing out the breakouts for the day, our own workshop on Taking Safe Decisions delivered a range of insights on risk-informed decision-making. Led by Ben Gilmartin, Noodhir Sobun, and Kevin Thompson—a trio of risk and safety experts from RSSB—delegates worked through a scenario of managing the safety risk associated with diabetes among drivers.
Our extensive programme, spread across three conference rooms, allowed delegates to move freely between the sessions mentioned and a huge range of others. This enabled them to create a unique, tailored agenda for their day.
Other sessions covered:
the Freight Safe Programme and Wagon Condition Programme
the Health and Wellbeing Dashboard
the evolution of non-technical skills (NTS) in GB rail
delivery point management risk
managing disruption
electrical safety culture
the 2023/24 Annual Health and Safety Report
overspeeding
operating incidents and culture
managing emerging technologies
operational safety awareness
NTS and building a fair culture.
We’ll be back in 2025 with another Operations Risk and Safety Conference. In the meantime, we’ll continue to keep you updated on risk and safety news and insights across our various outputs.
For example, you can check out our Spotlight on Safety videos and reports for a focused snapshot of the most prominent safety issues, as revealed by our risk and data analysis. Also, in our recent podcast episode, we speak with RSSB’s Head of Risk and Safety Intelligence about the importance of having high quality health and safety data. Tune in!
See what events we have coming up on our website.
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