Occupational Health and Safety and Fatigue

09/07/2026

Welcome Delegates to your One Stop Shop for the latest on Occupational Health and Safety & Fatigue Risk Management

Provision of welfare facilities – discover how The Welfare Charter encourages all rail companies to continuously improve access to welfare facilities for all rail workers. This is supported by RSSB research, projects, and initiatives.
Depot economics – read about the economic value of depots to support future investment discussions. Securing financial investment for improvements within depots is often difficult. RSSB is continuing to support activity in this area.
Safety view of zero hours contracts – explore the knowledge review about zero hours contracts and the underlying issues that have the potential to increase the risk to safety.
Road Traffic Collision Investigation Toolkit – get a better understanding of the cause of any road traffic collision, and the steps that can be taken to prevent it from happening again, which helps to improve your management of occupational road risk.

Road Safety Week – 13-17 July. The theme is ‘Safe Driver’.
Webinar – 15 July. The topic is ‘Occupational Road Risk Management: Safe Vehicle’.
RED safety video 74 – the latest RSSB RED video focuses on road traffic collisions and the immediate actions that should be taken.
Provision of welfare facilities – work is focused on giving freight drivers greater access to toilet facilities through the sharing of existing facilities across the network, presenting graphical information on welfare locations across the network, and offering the wider industry a collaborative space to address broader welfare issues.
Runaway risk – the Runaway Risk Decision Support Tool project will enable the introduction of new technology to help planners reduce the risk due to runaway vehicles in worksites.
Depot track safety and apprenticeships – improvements and standardisation in the approach to dynamic track stabilisation (DTS) and apprenticeships within depots.

If you would like to know more, get involved, and contribute, please contact the relevant staff member or group here:

Depot Working Group – depotwg@rssb.co.uk

Road Risk Group – rrg@rssb.co.uk

Fatigue Risk Management

Fatigue risk website page – offers a suite of resources to help create and manage a fatigue risk management system (FRMS), including options for different company roles and responsibilities. Guidance on specific situations such as on-call work and first night shifts are available.
Note that the Industry Fatigue Risk Group (IFRG) replaced the earlier group structure in 2026, and the website has been changed to reflect this change.
RS504 Fatigue Management: A Good Practice Guide – supports organisations in implementing a structured, risk-based approach to identifying, assessing, and mitigating fatigue-related risks. This document is currently being reviewed and may be revised later in 2026.
Fatigue risk education – the RSSB runs a two-day course aimed at upskilling those with fatigue risk management responsibilities in rail companies. Details can be found via our website training pages.
A shorter e-learning package aimed at front-line staff is currently in development. Registrations of interest for this training can be logged at this site: Fatigue Risk Awareness – Maintaining alertness at work e-learning course.

The Industry Fatigue Risk group is sponsoring four key activities:
- Refresh of industry fatigue education packs.
- Guidance on how to gain high-quality feedback about fatigue from staff.
- Risk-based prioritisation of Office of Rail and Road (ORR) Fatigue Factors to inform risk mitigation.
- Development of Infrastructure Safety Leadership Group’s specific implementation plans to meet ORR Fatigue Factors.

Driver Alertness Research (IMP T1193) – this ongoing research investigates the feasibility of monitoring technology to provide industry with new evidence-based insights to help manage train driver fatigue—the latest preliminary findings are available on our website.

If you would like to know more, get involved, and contribute, please contact: