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Safety Policy GroupSafety policy group 18/12/2006 DRAFT Notes of meeting Attendance
Apologies were received from: Julian Lindfield Richard Hulland Pat Daly Keith Watson Tim Gilbert 1. MINUTES OF 30 NOVEMBER 2006 MEETING The minutes were approved. Action: SMcK to place the minutes on the RSSB website. Action items: (1) The minutes of the October meeting have been placed on the RSSB website. AN asked that they should be easily found. Action: SMcK to ensure that the minutes are easily accessible. (2) MJ will check that the amended wording on the draft HLOS report was applied to the ORR document control system. (3) A discussion on CSTs and CSIs had been arranged as an agenda item for this meeting. 2. JSIPs – REPORT OF FEASIBILITY STUDY Catherine Baker gave a presentation, supported by Tony Taig who gave details of the outcome of the Kent pilot. RR explained the need for NR to take a national overview of risk – particularly in areas such as track renewals. The first step is to look at national asset plans, as was done in the trial. The planning process is a combination of top down strategies and bottom up planning. KD asked how long it would take to have a complete safety planning process. This could contribute to the HLOS process. RR said the main issue is that there is a difference between safety performance, which fluctuates, and safety risk, and how to obtain an output measure. The SRM and PIM are not designed to give a monthly output measure. TT noted that performance is beginning to move to a situation where it is dominated by the big incidents, similar to safety. RR suggested that the measure should be risk rather than actual performance, and should distinguish between passenger, workforce and public. This would mean they lined up with the work on HLOS. AN asked how it might be possible to finalise the report as a deliverable and decide what should be done with it. DW suggested that the managers involved in the Kent pilot might be used as advocates for the process. AN asked for an agreed statement supporting the report from Charles Horton and Andy Munden. The question for SPG is what should be done to go forward and what support it will need without cutting across existing processes. RR said that NR is not ready to sign up to the recommendations as they are not quite what NR plans to implement although good work has been done in the pilot. The recommendations tend to miss the fact that NR has planning processes already. NR’s issue is how to improve the safety planning process which is a wider question than just JSIPs. DW said that the TOCs’ view is that they see the potential benefits. Whilst it is unlikely that there will be a high level of joint action, there is a huge benefit from joint planning. The TOCs would look for disaggregated information on safety risk so they could work out the implications for them, and clarity on NR’s processes. RR noted the potential difficulty with timing and meeting the trajectories deadlines for the SSP given that different organisations have different planning years. KD noted the need for linking current initiatives together (HLOS, duty holder plans, RSSP and CSTs). RR said NR accepted the need for a planning cycle, bringing together NR and TOCs to discuss local actions, and a way of amalgamating these actions into duty holder plans. It is important that NR and RSSB take a thinking approach to aggregating plans together as it is not a process of simple addition. The planning cycle needs to be tied to the SSP timescales. A key question that must be answered is how the impact of the trajectories will be measured. AN asked if these were parallel or sequential steps; he saw them as parallel actions. There needs to be confidence in the data. A large number of people will need to understand how the process will work, and there are different planning and reporting timelines, and there needs to be a plan set out for the planning process. Further discussion on the process for future safety planning was rolled forward to the next agenda item. Actions: TT to send a copy of the draft report to managers involved in the Kent pilot to check they are happy with the content. TT to ask whether they will provide a statement of support for the outcomes of the Kent pilot from management in NR within Kent and South Eastern Trains. CB to arrange for RSSB to formally close the research project out. 3. SSP INDUSTRY GUIDANCE Catherine Baker gave a presentation and asked if there were any comments on the draft document. KD said that the draft does not say how it will fit with the HLOS work. RR noted that it aggregates passenger, workforce and public risk together which is not what the DfT want. AN suggested an upfront statement is needed on how the guidance links with HLOS. MJ asked about the inclusion of health issues. RR noted the difficulty with measuring health events because of their long-term nature, and the lack of data on health. AN noted that the impacts of health on safety are incorporated, but for the impacts of safety on health the concentration is on short term loss. This would be clarified in the document. It would be a mistake to widen the health scope before the planning process is fully established. MJ said it would be a pity if the industry’s work in the health area was not acknowledged. LP explained that the RSSB Board’s position is not to include health – the industry is not yet ready. MJ said that this it is a valid position, but it needs to be made clear in the document. DW referred to the issues of law arising from How Safe is Safe Enough (HSISE) and the ongoing work of the safety decisions programme. It was agreed that the section on safety decisions would be deleted and a reference to HSISE included in its place. RR said he thought that this should be the vehicle for saying what is being done with JSIPs. The guidance needs to be clear as to how the measure of success is to be reported back – possibly through the SRM. However, there is currently very little visibility in the industry as to how the SRM is updated. AN said that one possibility would be to update the elements of the SRM relating to key risk areas more frequently, or to review the SRM on a 3 year cycle to match the planning cycle. Changes to the review frequency would have resource implications. AN proposed that this should be looked at in more detail a separate meeting, with Colin Dennis present. RR emphasised the need to set out milestone dates for next year. The local planning process could start in April 2007 CB proposed that there would be two issues of the guidance. Issue 1 in January would address simple issues raised today and be used by TOCs producing plans up to April. Issue 2 in March needs to include full guidance on the new safety planning processes being proposed for 2007. AN noted that this will then impact on the first year of CP4. Actions: CB to arrange the incorporation of SPG’s comments into Issue 1 of the Guidance, and to plan for Issue 2 in March. CB to arrange an agenda item on the Safety Risk Model for January’s meeting, with Colin Dennis or a suitable member of his team present. CB to ensure the SSP process during 2007 is coordinated with HLOS developments. CB to begin planning the SSP process for 2007 around the joint duty holder planning processes proposed for further discussion at the January meeting. 4. COMMON SAFETY TARGETS AND INDICATORS CSTs CD summarised the current position. The ERA conference had shown up different opinions on what CSTs and CSIs were for. There had been another CST working group meeting since the last SPG which had come up with additional metrics for the NRVs. There had also been discussion about what the information would be used for. The ERA has requested longer-time series data to get a feel of the effect of major accidents. This has revealed a need for a methodology for dealing with multi-fatality accidents and a task group has been set up to look at this, starting in February. A programme of work for the CST working group has been drawn up leading up to September 2008, when a recommendation has to be made to the Commission. A progress report has already been sent to the Commission. CSIs CD advised that there is a working group meeting on 19 December, which will be looking at VPFs across Europe and at work in this area done by the University of Stuttgart. RG asked if there was proper support from the industry in identifying the best outcome – CD felt there was, through various channels including the UK reps and groups such as SPG. CSMs The first set are due by the end of January on risk assessment and evaluation. Julie Chadwick from ORR is involved with this work. DW said that although a great deal of hard work and effort is being put in, the problem is with understanding the purpose of it all. It is not clear how a European target will improve safety, whether funds would be made available for the lowest performers, and what action would be taken at the member state level to improve safety. CD said that the first set of CSTs is about removing the barriers to interoperability; they will not deliver improvement, but they are about monitoring safety. DW then asked what would happen with the second set. KD said that this is not yet known – there are many issues still to be thought through. DW said that he could see no practical effect on the UK and other West European countries – although the political outcome could be that funds will be spent on the accession states. AN said he saw the issue as normalising values across Europe and the concentration on CSTs may be a waste of time at this stage. KD noted that CSTs will allow a member state to be able to say that it is operating within the safety directive. CD said that the UK has to engage with this work – it would not be beneficial not to do so. 5. AOB SMcK outlined the current HSC consultative document proposing the merger of the HSC and HSE. MJ said that this is unlikely to affect the operational relationship with the ORR. Action: SMcK to take the consultation document to the Safety Legislation Committee to obtain their views and bring these to SPG in February. KD reported that her meeting with M Castaletti, referred to at the November meeting, had taken place. Action: KD will circulate a note of the meeting to SPG members. The next meeting will be held on Tuesday 16 January 2007, commencing at 0930.
Appendix 1 - Joint safety improvement planning |
