Operational Safety

Railway operations is a generic term to define the collection of disciplines and activities associated with the safe preparation, despatch signalling and driving of trains. These activities are undertaken by members of the workforce in Network Rail, passenger operators, freight operators and infrastructure contractors and because their duties directly control the safe movement of trains, all such personnel are deemed to be safety critical. Employers are legally required to have in place management systems to ensure that all such employees are fit and competent to undertake their duties.

The rules, procedures and instructions used by the railway operational workforce have been developed and refined over many years and they include all necessary arrangements to deal with disruption, emergencies and unplanned incidents on the mainline rail system. In the railway operational community, such incidents are referred to as abnormal and degraded mode working.

A quarterly report is produced for the industry, which is available in the Safety Performance Reporting section.

Operations Focus Group (OFG)

The new group replaces the former National SPAD Focus Group (NSFG) and its steering group. The former Track Safety Strategy Group and the Safety Critical Communications Focus Group had earlier been disbanded; partly in anticipation of the establishment of the OFG.

The purpose of the OFG is to facilitate the progressive improvement of operational safety through the identifications, discussion, development and promotion of justifiable effective campaigns, programmes and tools. It has no statutory responsibilities.

Specifically, it aims to monitor and review industry performance trends in relation to operational safety and consider changes to priorities and strategies making recommendations to the RSSB Board as appropriate.

The OFG members were nominated by their relevant constituency groups and represent Network Rail, Train Operators, Freight Operators, Infrastructure Maintenance companies, Trade Unions, Office of the Rail Regulator and London Underground. The OFG held its first meeting on Sept 26 2007.

OFG is facilitated by RSSB, the secretary is Susan Cassidy, Programme Manager, Operational Safety. Contact Susan by emailing susan.cassidy@rssb.co.uk or call 020 7904 7475.