Improving SMIS: Usability, Performance, Business Intelligence

04/01/2022

SMIS is the railway’s safety management and intelligence system, it has been running for over 20 years, has many users and is admired around the world. This section provides information on some of the activities we are undertaking to improve SMIS.

SMIS users have told us how they would like SMIS to be improved so they can make more and better use of it. We have a programme of work that will remove some of the barriers that prevent or inhibit users getting the information they need. Activities either recently completed or in progress to improve the many aspects of SMIS are described below.

Ensuring SMIS system performance: Business Intelligence

A new technical solution to transfer data from Coruson (the SMIS input front-end) into the data warehouse that sits behind it was implemented at the start of 2020. This has shown itself to be a robust solution.

The time from when data is entered to when it is available for reporting and analysis is now under 5 minutes, where it was typically not available until the next day. Positive feedback from the industry’s safety analysts has confirmed that this solution has helped streamline their reporting processes. This has also made it easier to validate that data has been entered and categorised correctly. As part of this enhancement, the structure of the database was changed to improve the performance of reports and dashboards.

We plan to migrate the SMIS BI data warehouse into RSSB’s cloud infrastructure. This will allow a faster response to requirements for additional data, improvements to the SMIS BI data warehouse, and the implementation of robust monitoring. We are currently doing extensive testing to ensure that this migration is robust, and that the impact of this will be negligible to the industry’s safety analysts.
Improving SMIS System Performance: Data Entry

The SMIS data entry front end is built in Ideagen’s Coruson software. RSSB has been working with Ideagen, the SMIS software supplier, to improve system performance such as fixing the ‘hidden data’ issue and making the RIDDOR reporting rules more stable.

In July 2021, SMIS was upgraded to version 55 of Coruson. The upgrade was a success, and the system has since performed to expected levels.
New Recording and Classification Functionality for Accident Causes
The Causes form provides an industry-wide mechanism for collecting underlying accident cause data so that it is possible to:

Enable the identification of safety trends in accidents and help the prioritisation of safety decisions. Find out more.

Provide a common language for industry on the topic of accident causes.

Encourage investigators to consider the role of system failures (10 incident factors) as well as human failures (human performance factors) in accidents.

Support the identification of effective recommendations.

Organisations can choose what is captured and who enters the data within their own organisations. However, with endorsement by the industry’s System Safety Risk Group, it is expected that all SPADs from 1 April 2021 onwards should have a completed Causes form linked to the main SPAD event. This is so that we can support the national SPAD strategy and demonstrate cross-industry learning sooner from a risk area that has been shown to be increasing.

Guidance on how to complete the Causes form is available in the SMIS Cause User Guide. To ensure the data is of good data quality, RSSB will provide feedback on your classifications once you start entering accident cause data.

If you need assistance with the Causes form or would like further information, please contact alice.monk@rssb.co.uk
Simplifying the SMIS Input Forms
RSSB’s SMIS development team has explored improvements that can reduce the time it takes to enter and share data in SMIS. This involved feedback from SMIS data entry users, the SMIS Advisory Group and subject matter experts.

In January 2021 a new, easier to complete Personal Accident form was implemented with about 50% fewer fields. The design also reduced the screen loading time by around 90 seconds per event, making it even quicker to complete and has reduced the number of ‘first pass’ data quality issues by around a third.

The next batch of simplified forms, known as ‘Incidents’, was released in June 2022 and included: public behaviour, SPADs and operating incidents, train failures, infrastructure failures and control system activations and interventions. These forms incorporate the learnings from the Personal Accident design and benefit from significantly reduced data model sizes and simplified form layout.

The programme of improvements to the rest of the SMIS data model and corresponding forms continues, with further batch releases of simplified forms planned before 2024.

Planned improvements to the data model will enable organisations with bespoke control logging and other safety management systems to share their data automatically with SMIS. This will improve how safety events are reported and processed by SMIS.

For information on using the new simplified forms please see:

Personal Accident Form general guidance

watch the webinar

Incident forms FAQ

If you have any questions about the simplification programme, please contact us via the customer portal. If you need technical support for using SMIS please contact the RSSB Service Desk.

Further details will be issued to SMIS users as the improvements to SMIS data entry progress.

Haven’t found what you’re looking for?

Get in touch with our Professional Head Risk and Safety Intelligence for more information.

Paul Murray

Tel: 020 3142 5496

https://customer-portal.rssb.co.uk