Safety Risk Management
Guidance and support on good practice
in safety management
We provide guidance and support on good practice in safety management, risk assessment, and safety-related decision making.
This helps RSSB members understand their legal obligations and keep abreast of good practice. It enables them to make decisions that support a safe, affordable, and high-performing railway.
Marcus Dacre, Head of Risk and Safety Intelligence
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Taking Safe Decisions comprises a good practice policy document and supporting resources. These represent a body of research, consultation, and consensus-building in the area, with input from the Office of Rail and Road and others. The Taking Safe Decisions framework supports rail companies in making robust risk-based safety decisions.
The resources help RSSB members factor safety into their decision making. They show what to consider in order to make rational, equitable and defensible decisions. Additionally, Taking Safe Decisions ensures our members can fulfil their legal safety obligations and meet business objectives.
Decisions underpinned by the framework protect the safety of rail staff, passengers, and other users. They satisfy the law, respect the interests of stakeholders, and are commercially sound.
The Taking Safe Decisions guidance and supporting resources are available on our website.
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Ben Gilmartin, Principal Intelligence Analyst
Measuring Safety Performance guidance and supporting documents are available for registered members via the RSSB website.
Kevin Thompson, Lead SMS Specialist
The Measuring Safety Performance guidance helps rail companies identify the safety performance indicators (SPIs) most appropriate to their operations and ensures their continued effectiveness.
The guidance is based on established good practice and research undertaken by the industry. It offers advice on:
establishing an SPI programme
identifying SPIs
evaluating SPIs
using SPIs to support decisions
reviewing SPIs.
Rail companies can get assurance that their operation is safe and they are focusing on the right things by monitoring signals based on critical and vulnerable controls.
Measuring Safety Performance promotes the monitoring of both activity and outcome SPIs. Activity indicators measure the deployment of safety management resources and activities.
They include training, competence assessment, health surveillance, inspection, testing and maintenance, which help to prevent accidents. Only considering output measures limits the opportunity to act to prevent an accident.
The guidance sets a process to follow that helps users develop a balanced set of SPIs.
RSSB has produced Guidance Note GEGN8646 on the Common Safety Method for Risk Evaluation and Assessment (CSM RA). It supports the management of safety risk arising from a technical, operational or organisational change. It is aligned with the ORR’s guidance on the CSM RA and provides more detailed practitioner-level advice.
Rail companies can use our guidance to better understand how to do a risk assessment that is suitable and sufficient. Such an assessment is required under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations.
Full and formal application of the CSM RA process is required for changes that are deemed significant. However, the principles can be applied to all risk assessments.
RSSB members can access more information on the CSM Risk Assessment and download the guidance via our website.
Bing Yan, Lead System Safety Engineer
Our cost-benefit analysis (CBA) guidance describes rail industry good practice on how CBA can be used to inform a safety-related decision. CBA can be used as part of a business case or to determine whether a measure is needed to meet the legal requirement of ensuring safety so far as is reasonably practicable.
Rail companies can use our guidance to ensure CBA is being used consistently and confidently. This results in rational, equitable and defendable safety-related decisions that meet legal requirements.
Registered members can download a PDF version of the guidance via our website.
Paul Murray, Lead Intelligence Analyst
The Excel-based tool provides a four-step process to undertake a safety-related cost-benefit analysis. It incorporates RSSB and ORR guidance and the current Value of Preventing a Fatality (VPF).
The tool helps users evaluate the costs and benefits of safety-related changes in a way that is consistent with industry good practice.
We have made improvements to the tool to better align it with the Taking Safe Decision framework and to improve the user experience.
The tool is available to RSSB members and affiliates via our website.
RSSB estimates the Value of Preventing Fatality (VPF) annually by uprating the Department for Transport’s VPF for the previous year. We use the latest available economic growth data from the Office for National Statistics.
RSSB recommends that rail operators use VPF to determine the value of safety benefits and disbenefits in decision-making processes.
Safety benefits are incorporated into cost-benefit analysis by multiplying the VPF by the expected risk reduction associated with a measure.
Our members, particularly rail operators, use the VPF when undertaking cost-benefit analysis. VPF converts risk to an equivalent financial value, which decision makers can use to make a comparison with other costs and benefits.
Uprating the DfT’s VPF gives the rail industry a more current VPF. The VPF is used in our Taking Safe Decisions Cost-Benefit Analysis Tool.
In order to make a comparison of risks with costs, the risk needs to be translated into a financial value. This is done using the industry ‘value of preventing a fatality.
Registered members can view the published values each year on our website.
Clifton Masdea, Risk and Safety Intelligence Analyst
We have developed a generic hazard list to provide a common structure and language for describing hazards. This promotes a critical aspect of risk assessment, which is the systematic and thorough identification of hazards.
Using a common way of classifying and describing hazards promotes a consistent approach to risk assessment and hazard management. This supports wider sharing and appropriate reuse of information.
The generic hazard and ontology lists provide GB rail with a benchmark to improve consistency in hazard identification and risk assessment. Using them can save time and provide confidence that a hazard list is thorough and complete.
They can benefit individual organisations and rail projects by providing an independent check of their hazard identification activities. This enables them to fill in gaps and assures them of the completeness of their own lists.
They will also enable RSSB to link safety requirements in standards to the hazards that they are intended to manage in a systematic way.
The proposer shall systematically identify ... all reasonably foreseeable hazards for the whole system under assessment.
The Generic Hazard List can be found on the RSSB website.
Our Bowtie Hub contains a library of bowtie risk analysis models and guidance material to help members understand the bowtie method and use it effectively.
The bowtie method is a type of risk analysis that can be used to analyse and communicate how high-risk scenarios may develop. It can provide rail companies with a visual representation of potential risks, highlight the effectiveness of risk controls, and show areas for improvement.
The bowtie library is aimed at RSSB members who have an expert interest in bowtie models or specific risk areas. It gives members access to a set of common bowtie models covering different hazards. These can be used to benchmark safety risk management.
The bowties have mostly been developed to support collaborative, industry-wide activity. However, they can be a starting point for bowtie risk analysis specific to a particular company or location.
We have developed good practice guidance on bowtie risk analysis. Bowtie models can provide a deep-dive into a safety issue. An in-depth analysis enables our members to generate a better understanding of the risk and how it is controlled.
Registered users can access our Bowtie Hub on our website.
Members can request access to the RSSB BowTieServer Library via the Bowtie Hub or by emailing us for access.
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Kevin Thompson, Lead Safety Management Systems Specialist
Good safety risk management is both a legal requirement and an integral part of any effective and efficient business. Every passenger, every item of freight, and every member of staff should reach their destination safely every day. Achieving this requires a well-established risk and evidence-based approach to safety. Our bespoke safety risk management support is available on a consultancy basis to help individual organisations tackle their specific problems.
We help organisations better understand their risk and take safe and cost-effective decisions. We can help them to demonstrate that their decisions and decision-making processes are rational, equitable, defensible, and in line with legal requirements and industry good practice.
Our areas of expertise include:
applying the industry Taking Safe Decisions framework and principles to meet legal requirements and business objectives
providing support in developing and using safety metrics and monitoring as part of an organisation’s safety management system
developing bespoke risk profiling
performing topic-specific deep-dives, complex data analysis, and safety benchmarking
undertaking or reviewing risk assessments
quantified risk analysis
undertaking or reviewing safety-related cost-benefit analysis
helping organisations develop and use bowtie risk models according to industry good practice
supporting the application of the common safety method for risk evaluation and assessment.
If you need support with aspects of safety risk management in your organisation you can contact us via the customer portal.
More information, including examples of how we have helped organisations, is provided on our website.
