Health and Safety Insights
Insights that support effective and efficient health and safety management
We analyse data from many sources to provide insights that support effective and efficient health and safety management. We also report on health and safety performance across the GB railway.
We provide insights into how safety is being managed, when new issues or trends are emerging, and where improvements are needed. Data to support management of health and wellbeing is less mature. But we’re putting the foundations in place and supporting an increasingly evidence-led approach.
The insights we provide can take the form of regular monitoring metrics or deep-dives into specific risk issues. They have many uses and users. For example, a project team that needs data to support a decision or a cross-industry risk group that needs evidence to inform its strategic priorities.
Namrita Kohli, Principal Risk and Safety Intelligence Analyst
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Our Annual Health and Safety Report (AHSR) provides an objective, evidence-based assessment of health and safety performance on the GB mainline railway. It covers the same risk areas as the Rail Health and Safety Strategy: operations, occupational health and safety, public behaviour, health and wellbeing and asset management.
The AHSR features learning from the year and shares our upcoming plans to work with industry to improve safety and reduce risk. It updates industry, passengers and taxpayers on progress with delivering a safe, healthy and affordable railway.
The AHSR is supported by a report on Railway Safety in Context, which shares high-level health and safety trends and benchmarks safety on GB rail against other transport modes and European railways. It is also supported by a Data Transparency Document, which explains how we’ve collected the data and calculated the figures used in the AHSR.
The AHSR is primarily targeted at health and safety professionals and rail industry leaders. They can use it to compare their company’s experience with the wider industry, access relevant resources, and identify opportunities to collaborate to improve health and safety.
Organisations including the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) and the Department for Transport (DfT) also use the report. It supports the ORR’s review of industry risks and informs its annual report. The DfT uses it to brief the government on rail health and safety.
The cross-industry risk groups that support the delivery of the RHSS use the report to monitor progress and review priorities.
Every year we seek to improve the AHSR’s content, accessibility and usability. In 2022/23 we introduced a new digital format with interactive features.
RSSB members and affiliates can download the AHSR and supporting documents from our website.
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Health and safety reports that cover risk areas in even more detail are produced for cross-industry risk groups. Our members are encouraged to make use of these too.
Robert Sigrist, Lead Intelligence Analyst
Our analysts provide key health and safety metrics to cross-industry risk groups in the form of reports and dashboards. The metrics facilitate conversations about trends, emerging threats, and priorities for improvement.
We monitor health and safety performance across risk areas identified in the Rail Industry Health and Safety Strategy. This helps rail companies to identify new or evolving risks. It tracks the impact of external change such as climate change. It also monitors the efficacy of initiatives put in place by cross-industry risk groups.
We review the data and insights with cross-industry groups so they can make evidence- and risk-based decisions. Each group has representatives from RSSB member organisations, who collaborate to improve health and safety on GB rail.
We have developed interactive data hubs for some groups, which will replace the static report that they currently receive. We have passenger operations, freight safety, level crossing, and signals passed at danger data hubs now available. This gives members access to live data in real time.
The cross-industry risk groups meet quarterly, and the metrics are updated in line with their meeting cycle.
The metrics are published on the RSSB website so RSSB members can access and draw insights from the data.
We provide health and safety data to help our members and stakeholders generate business insights. Much of the data comes from the Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS) and the Safety Risk Model.
Rail operators use the data to enhance their understanding of key risk issues, support evidence-based decisions, and build business cases for health and safety improvement. Operators and other industry stakeholders also use it to inform cross-industry research, standards change, and collaborative health improvement and risk reduction initiatives. Meanwhile, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch uses it to support their investigations.
We work with requesters to understand their data needs and identify how best to meet them. We do not release information that identifies individuals or companies, or that could be misinterpreted. SMIS data is owned by the companies that have input it. There are strict conditions of use. We only provide anonymised or aggregated data to organisations outside the SMIS community.
This service is primarily for RSSB member organisations. However, we will also consider requests from non-members who plan to use the data to support projects that will be of benefit to the railway. All data requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis. More information on accessing SMIS data can be found on our website.
We manage data requests through our customer self-service portal.
Kevin Thompson, Lead SMS Specialist
You have been very helpful in assisting us in defending the rail industry on a particular topic. This topic is far more complex than most parties outside the industry either know or understand, or want to know or understand.
Information on Jaspersoft training, including how to a book place, is on our SMIS training webpage.
Safety data in SMIS is made available to the organisations that input it via Jaspersoft, a customisable reporting and analytics platform. We provide Jaspersoft training to enable interrogation of SMIS data. This enables users to create ad-hoc queries and design and schedule regular reports. Later this year, we plan to stop using Jaspersoft and switch to Power BI as our reporting and analytics platform.
Organisations use Jaspersoft to access SMIS data so they can:
do their own safety reporting
support accident investigation
make a case for change.
Jaspersoft training is free of charge. It’s delivered via MS Teams in two three-hour sessions. Trainees can use this time to build their own reports under the supervision of the trainer. We will also provide Power BI training free of charge once we make the switch.
Sean Matthew, Assistant Strategy Implementation Manager
The support from the RSSB SMIS team to help us to transition from spreadsheets, pivot tables and lots of labour to deriving reports from SMIS and Jaspersoft has been invaluable. We now have a greater trust in our data.
Anyone who enters or updates events in SMIS can access our free virtual training session, which comes in two parts:
SMIS data entry requirements, which includes the scope of SMIS reporting and the importance of good data quality.
The functionality of Coruson, which is the application used to enter SMIS data.
The training is available via self-learning and over Teams. Microsoft Forms will replace Coruson, and training will also be provided on this new application.
We also provide guidance to support our inputters with data entry.
We have made learning about SMIS data entry flexible and easy to access so our members can get the support they need when they need it. As well supporting those who report events into SMIS, this ensures that those utilising the data can rely on it being high quality.
Thank you for the training yesterday. It really covered what areas I want to get out of SMIS.
Information on the training, including how to a book place, is on our SMIS training webpages.
Guidance for SMIS inputting can be found on our service desk. SMIS inputters can send us their queries via our service desk.
SMIS reporting organisations have access to the programme. Depending on reporting numbers, they also receive a scorecard, certificate, and assessment each year. This helps them understand where they are on their journey to achieving high-quality data.
More information on the data quality programme can be found on our website.
The data in the Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS) underpins the industry’s risk- and evidence-based approach to safety management. Our Data Quality Programme ensures that efforts are focused on continuously improving the quality of SMIS data.
The activities we undertake to assess and improve SMIS data are:
face-to-face engagements twice a year in the form of health check visits to organisations that report into SMIS.
data improvement reports to highlight data errors and the time taken to input data.
company scorecards that include data quality metrics for overall timeliness, core accuracy, and completeness.
manual validation of high-risk events such as fatalities, specified injuries, collisions and derailments, and signals passed at danger.
targeted data checks in key risk areas.
The programme helps data providers identify and resolve issues. It provides decision makers with information about data quality. It also provides confidence that the information being used is accurate, complete and timely.
Data Improvement Reports allow users to identify quality issues for their data held in SMIS. They are updated daily. They encourage users to correct, monitor and improve their data, and highlight the progress made against each measure.
We undertake an annual system-wide assessment and produce company-level scorecards. Companies are awarded a certificate for data quality annually to assess whether their data is gold, silver or bronze standard or if it requires improvement. This is shared with industry leaders to provide visibility and encourage improvement where needed.
We’ve made our improvement reports interactive to help members pinpoint quality issues. These can be accessed in Jaspersoft.
Siona Vass, Lead Intelligence Analyst
Our Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS) contains a set of rules that automatically identifies all events that are RIDDOR reportable. Once a SMIS user has indicated they are ready to send, RSSB automatically forwards them to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).
RIDDOR data informs ORR’s activities and outputs such as its Annual Health and Safety Report and its annual Rail Safety Statistical Release. RSSB, meanwhile, uses the data in its safety analysis and risk modelling.
New RIDDOR events and updates to previous events are sent to the ORR every two days. This saves SMIS users time and effort, as they don’t have to report events on the ORR’s online portal. It also ensures the quality of the data can be managed and guidance provided to ensure consistency.
Many RIDDOR requirements are not specific to rail, so the data allows the industry to benchmark the safety of its workers against those in other sectors.
Collecting data through SMIS ensures a common approach to reporting through a structured and industry-agreed data model. This helps to ensure consistency and accuracy. It also reduces the potential for duplicate reporting where more than one organisation is involved in an incident.
Organisations with access to SMIS can also see RIDDOR reporting data using Jaspersoft. They can query the data and design one-off or regular scheduled reports to better understand what the ORR is receiving. More information on how to access Jaspersoft can be found on our website.
We collect data for our members on safety events that meet the threshold for Common Safety Indicator (CSI) reporting. We check this data with them and provide it to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). We also provide Great Britain’s submission to the International Union of Railways (UIC) Safety Database. This helps prioritise international activity. It also enables safety benchmarking between different railways.
We help our members meet mandatory CSI reporting requirements efficiently and to a consistent quality. The CSIs help assess whether the railway system complies with national safety targets. They also facilitate high-level monitoring of railway safety performance using a method that is consistent with the European Union Agency for Railways’.
We submit GB rail’s data to the UIC Safety Database annually. Our submission covers events from the previous calendar year. We extract relevant events from the Safety Management Intelligence System.
By collating and sharing data in this way we enable our members to benchmark their performance against other European operators. This helps them and GB rail more broadly identify opportunities to collaborate and learn.
Our work saves our members valuable time and effort as there’s no need for them to report the data to the ORR or UIC. As a contributing organisation, RSSB has access to the UIC Safety Database and participates in its Safety Performance Group.
An excellent snapshot of the UK’s international standing in rail stats.
The CSIs are published on the ORR website.
Reports on GB and other railways’ safety performance are published on the UIC website.
The SPAD reports are published on the RSSB website.
Sign up to our monthly Safety News e-newsletter to receive the latest SPAD reporting straight to your inbox.
We provide a range of datasets to help stakeholders better understand the risk from signals passed at danger (SPADs) and the context within which these events occur.
This includes:
up-to-date lists of SPADs on the network
weekly multi-SPAD signals updates
monthly SPAD and TPWS updates
data on SPADs by route and operator
and SPADs by miles travelled.
The reports provide an industry-wide view of SPADs and SPAD risk, including normalised data by operator. This helps our members understand the risk from SPADs and how it is changing. This insight can be applied both to their rail organisation and in the wider industry context.
The industry’s SPAD Risk Subgroup uses the reports to develop a richer evidence base. This informs interventions to make the railway safer.
While SPAD rates and risk have reduced over the past 20 years, since the pandemic these have started to rise again.
Clifton Masdea, Intelligence Analyst
Train operating companies (TOCs) can use our benchmarking dashboards to compare their performance against similar operators. The dashboards are based on data from the Safety Intelligence Management System (SMIS).
The dashboards provide an interactive format that can be viewed by:
TOC
key performance indicator
industry average.
TOCs can drill down further into their data and link directly to SMIS to find out more about the events included in the figures. This feature helps users identify the events behind trends. It also shows where reports are missing or need additional information.
The dashboards allow TOCs to better compare performance and identify and share best practice. Users can present live benchmarking data within their organisation and to external stakeholders at a click of a button.
Our automated dashboards save TOCs time and effort by avoiding the manual handling that was required to collate benchmarking data.
Additionally, our dashboards support improvements to data quality by highlighting any inconsistencies in reporting. More information on our safety benchmarking dashboards is on our website.
TOCs that are members of RSSB and report into SMIS can use the dashboards. You can request access via our customer self-service portal or by emailing your key contact.
Customer portal
Lisa Regan, Risk and Safety Intelligence Analyst
We provide guidance for rail operators to help them manage safety-related contacts from members of the public. Members of the public can provide vital safety information that could prevent an accident. However, this information can sometimes lack clarity and be difficult to interpret.
The RAIB investigation into the Sandilands tram accident in 2016 found that ‘potential safety learning from customer complaints was not fully exploited’. This prompted the mainline railway to review its processes and revisit learning from the fatal derailment at Potters Bar in 2002.
Rail companies can use our guidance to review their processes and practices. It is structured around a six-stage process and the culture that underpins it. It can help ensure processes are effective and proportionate.
The guidance is available to registered users of the RSSB website.
