Our work isn’t all about safety standards, but one way or another all routes lead back to it, says RSSB’s Ant Davey.
We cover a range of topics on our podcast, as shown by recent episodes, but all lead to one thing: enhancing safety across the rail network.
Beyond producing podcasts my job includes preparing our publications to be as understandable as possible. Getting the message across clearly, whatever it may be, is part of our safety culture.
As you may have noticed, at RSSB we’ve changed our logo, and our documents will start to have a new look. This is, in part, to emphasise that our work isn’t all about safety standards. There’s an ‘and’ in our company name; our work covers safety and standards, and much more besides.
Many of those standards are about making the operational railway as safe as reasonably practicable. But other parts of our work are about performance, efficiency and sustainability. There’s work being done to introduce hydrogen as a traction power source. We’re working to reduce the railway’s carbon footprint, albeit safely.
Through October, we celebrated a birthday: the Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS) is 25 years old this year. So, we’ve dedicated three of our recent podcast episodes to explore the past, present and future of SMIS (catch up now). Its continued contribution to keeping everybody safe on the railway is a task for everybody – not just those who interact directly with the system but everybody who’s involved in an incident and helps to report it.
SMIS needs more data, and it needs good quality data. You can help make that happen by reporting incidents, close calls and near misses. And that includes ones that you’ve been involved in.
Podcast episode 46 marked the first in a series about safety culture. It looks at the role of leaders in developing a fair safety culture. That’s one where it’s safe to admit to having made a mistake, for whatever reason. A fair and just safety culture is one where those incidents are seen as learning opportunities rather than a chance to lay blame. As Ellie Burrows of Network Rail explains, deliberate rule breaking and taking potentially dangerous short cuts will never be acceptable. But a fair and just safety culture is one where, if you’ve mucked up, it’s okay to talk about it.
It’s also okay to talk about mental health. In episode 44, I talk with my colleague Faye Bacon, who works closely with our cross-industry health and wellbeing groups, about the Railway Mental Health Charter. While industry leaders are the ones signing up to it, it’s something everyone can use. It includes a seven-step guide that rail staff can use independently, so you and your colleagues can support each other when times are rough.