RSSB Podcast

Learn about what rail needs to do to reach the net zero target, and the range of different actions that need to be taken.

The significant trends in safety risk from 2022-2023, and what's being done to keep our railway one of the safest in the world.

Are you getting the best value from your assets? Could your asset management approach be improved? In this episode we look at ISO 55001 as a possible framework for better asset management.

As RSSB celebrates its 20th year, this episode looks at the work that it has done to help improve safety at level crossing, one of the biggest sources of risk for the railway.

Finding the right people to fill vacant roles can be difficult. Steve Womack of Amey Infrastructure Wales talks about how he has found workers with transferable skills. He's also contributing social value to his local area by employing ex-offenders.

The Rail Accident Investigation Branch does what it says on the tin. It looks at both accidents and incidents to find their underlying causes. No blame is laid, but recommendations for mitigations are made; some of which may be around organisational culture.

In this first of a series on specific health conditions, Tavid Dobson talks about his experience of dealing with prostate cancer.

Covid-19 is still with us, adding to the range of winter illnesses that can affect us. So what can we do to stay as healthy as possible in the coming weeks and months?

Because rail is strongly safety focused, speed restrictions were applied when earthworks failed following extreme weather events. However, speed restrictions can increase safety risk elsewhere. The Whole System Risk Model helps rail’s response to be proportionate.

Achieving net zero carbon will need more electrification. This episode looks at new and updated standards that make the requirements easier to understand, and have the potential to deliver over £27m in cost savings. If you design OLE, or build or maintain AC-powered trains, you’ll want to listen to this.

Overspeeding isn’t just an issue when driving trains. It happens on the roads as well. With nearly 10,000 road vehicles in its fleet Network Rail took steps to put numbers to it, and the findings were alarming. Hear what’s being done to tackle the problem and the outcomes so far.

Good decision making needs the support of good data. So, in this episode you can hear about the work that goes into assuring data quality, and the people behind it.

SMIS is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022. Hear something of its history, its reason for being, and what it has done for our industry. How SMIS supports risk modelling and safety decision making.

Good information makes for good, evidence-based, safety critical decisions. Much of that information comes from data in the railway’s Safety Management Intelligence System, SMIS. This podcast looks at what’s being done and planned to make it easier and more efficient to use.

Assets are everywhere. They are the things, physical and digital, that make up the systems we work with. When they work as designed and planned, to meet their objectives, the people who manage them go un-noticed. But these are the people who keep the risk of using them as low as reasonably practicable.

Embedding Safety Culture means change. Ellie Burrows explains what safety culture means to her, and talks about what leaders need to do to deliver the fair culture that supports it.

At LNER they’re taking the BowTie Method beyond operational risk analysis, to create a novel corporate risk register.

Not just a certificate for the wall, but a seven step guide for how to support your employees and colleagues towards better mental health.

Only when we investigate can we understand. Incidents while driving for work can have fatal or life-changing results, so we need to investigate to find ways to stop incidents repeating. Here’s what’s needed for an effective investigation.

The state of the track that trains run on is vital to the safety of passengers and crew. It needs to be monitored and maintained regularly to keep it safe. But in the late 1990s that wasn’t always happening. And in October 2000, that led to a derailment that caused 4 deaths and injured over 70 more.

One of the railway’s aims is to deliver better customer service. Much of the operating timetable is set many months in advance. But there is also a need to make very-short-term plans. Sometimes just hours in the future. This may be a solution.

The HSE is increasing its interest in work-related road traffic collisions. Investigations help avoid more serious incidents, but the police won’t help - unless...

Learning from… previous experience is vital. But unless we keep and communicate what we learn, the memory is lost. As Right Track magazine celebrates its 10th anniversary, we look at why and what it delivers for those who work at the front line on the railway.

We can learn a lot from accidents. As we try to avoid history repeating itself, Greg Morse looks back at the Potters Bar accident of 20 years ago. What went wrong? What have we learned?

As it has accounted for as many as half of our workforce fatalities, road driving is an important area for risk management. Both as employers and contractors of services, rail organisations have a duty of care to those who work for them.

First published in the At the Front Line series, in this episode we look at the continuing work being done by Samaritans, and talk with a Network Rail project manager who has first-hand experience of small talk and how it saved his life.

In this episode we look at the work Samaritans does over the Christmas period, and talk with a trainee Shunt Driver at Freightliner about why and what she has done to support Samaritans.

This episode, first published in the At the Front Line stream, looks at the work of the Network Rail Safety Task Force to reduce open line working and the risks associated with it.

Driving and riding for work fall under the HSAW Act 1974. New HSE guidance covers responsibilities for employers and employees—whatever the vehicle.

In this episode we look at the work being done by the CFVN Working Group to improve the lot of ground staff and engineers in freight yards and depots, and to reduce the delays caused by the condition of freight vehicles.

This episode looks at RSSB's research into lone working. It includes the guidance that has been developed to help managers, employers, and lone workers themselves, to achieve better outcomes for health, safety and wellbeing.

Learning from… - the Clapham Accident. Lessons from the past have helped us improve safety risk management. But that's no reason to be complacent. We all still need to remember and practice, to make our railway as safe as we can.

Defining Very Short-Term Planning routes is resource intensive. In this episode: the importance of rail freight to the economy and environment; and how a new tool could help deliver a better customer experience.

In this episode we look at some of the benefits the HS2 project will bring to Britain, including extra rail capacity, better connectivity, employment opportunities, and reduced carbon impacts.

This podcast looks at how the the Functional Mock-up Interface can let modelling data outputs be shared collaboratively for better results, without giving away company secrets.

In this episode we look at how the Internet of Things is being trialled to improve passenger experience on Grand Central Railway services.

This podcast looks at how the G-FORCE Tool has been used by GWR in the Control Centre, examples of incidents when it has been used, and the benefits it can bring.

This podcast looks at the collaborative work done, and to be done, to deliver the Sustainable Rail Strategy, and the actions needed to deliver its goals.

This podcast looks at how the Driving for Better Business Gap Analysis Tool has been used and the benefits it has delivered at East Midlands Railway.

This podcast looks at the BowTie Method of risk analysis - why and when to use it, and how it can help broaden understanding of risk, hazards, and mitigations in a visual way.

This podcast looks at the Driving for Better Business Gap Analysis Tool and how it can help identify whether your company is meeting minimum legal requirements for how well you are managing road driving risk.

This podcast looks at the Occupational Road Risk Management Charter. Steve Enright explains what it contains, why companies should sign it and the financial and reputational benefits that companies will see from working collaboratively to better manage road risk.

This podcast looks at how RSSB and the Road Risk Group are collaborating with Highways England and its Driving for Better Business programme to increase the maturity of our occupational road risk management, and reduce the level of harm caused by driving for work.

This episode looks at how the RSSB Horizon Scanning programme has identified issues and helped companies make the best possible decisions around the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. With a vaccination programme well under way, Claire Shooter talks about the support that has been delivered, and how to deal with the uncertainty of the future.

In the last of the When Software Goes Wrong series, we talk about incidents and a concept that will engage your creativity and imagination to think about reasonably foreseeable scenarios - what could go wrong - and how to design them out of your own software-based projects.

In this episode I talk with RSSB's recently appointed Director for Sustainable Development, George Davies, about his vision for a new Rail Sustainability Strategy. He also talks about his plans for how to collaborate with industry colleagues to agree, implement, and communicate the strategy and the progress it achieves.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about how good documentation helped a quick recovery when a complex, software-based software system unexpectedly shut down in 2014. The system used to control aircraft movements over the whole of England and Wales.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about the software issues that caused a collision while testing a new signalling system on a city's metro system, to extract the lessons learned so that we can avoid similar errors on the GB railway.

In this episode Dr Emma Taylor talks about the software issues that caused the Cambrian Line incident, the lessons learned, and the industry's response to recommendation 3 in the RAIB report.

This podcast looks at how the ORR assess whether railway companies are doing enough to reduce trespass risk and the role of the new guidance on trespass risk assessment in helping to meet that objective.

This episode looks at the new RSSB guidance on trespass risk assessment. We also discuss how well trespass prevention measures work, with an example of how higher fences had a dramatic effect on trespass incidents. We consider the advantages of having a consistent assessment method, and whether we have a clear picture of what measures reduce the risk of trespass to as low as reasonably practicable.

Part 2 of this podcast looks at the culture change that will be needed to address digital safety threats.  The need for traditional design engineers to broaden their sphere of thinking, and to bring others into design conversations.  Emma also talks about the need to start thinking about reasonably foreseeable scenarios. For us all to start thinking about what could go wrong when you consider the digital components within your physical assets.

Part 1 of this podcast looks at the NIS Regulations 2018and their effect on the rail industry. Who should be concerned, and what we need to do to demonstrate compliance and avoid fines of up to £17m. What to do until we have a good body of precursors to digital incidents; and what aspects or operations should be considered as safety critical.

This episode looks at the rail industry partnership with Samaritans', and at the Managing Suicidal Contacts training programme. And one front line customer experience manager tells us about how the training gave him the confidence to intervene.  Then he tells a story about just one of the 29 live-saving interventions he has made. Helping to deliver a better, safer railway.

This podcast looks at how trespass impacts the railway.  Its operational, financial, and human costs.

This podcast looks at how greater use of digital technologies will impact asset integrity, and the increased collaboration among previously separate fields that will be needed to deliver a better, safer railway.

In this podcast Sara Sherrard and Tom Moran talks about failings in customer care and the improvements implemented after Sara's mother suffered a fatal accident at Mill Hill Station.

Dougie Hill, Head of National Freight Strategy & Policy at Direct Rail Services, and Geoff Spencer, former CEO of DB Cargo (UK) talk through the challenges faced to get commercially competing companies to collaborate to deliver a better, safer railway.

Catherine Baker, director of the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis Service (CIRAS), talks about how the confidential reporting service works.  She discusses the types of incidents and reasons for calls, and examples of the results that CIRAS achieves.

Trevor Parkin of East Midlands Railway and Chris Harrison of RSSB talk about what the rail industry is doing to reduce the number of signals passed at danger, and so the likelihood of a potentially fatal train accident.

Joana Faustino, Work Psychologist at RSSB, talks about the feelings we might be experiencing and some coping strategies for the pressures that we are facing.