Fatigue and Alertness

Whether you work in an office or on the front line, drive your car home from work or a train full of passengers, you need to be awake and alert to do your job safely and efficiently. Managing fatigue is everybody’s responsibility. Our aim is to make sure that everyone, at all levels, understands their role in managing fatigue. Based on our research and consultation with the rail industry, we have put together a range of resources to help with this.

Fatigue is a state of weariness because of working for too long, working against our body clock, heavy physical or mental workload, insufficient rest or inadequate sleep. Fatigue can develop quickly, for example if we are doing heavy lifting. But it can also develop slowly, for example by losing an hour of sleep a few nights in a row. The environment we work in and what we eat and drink can influence how quickly we start to suffer from fatigue.

Fatigued people are very likely to make mistakes. The effects of serious fatigue are comparable to being over the drink driving limit: poor judgements, slow reactions, poor memory, impaired vision. In our industry fatigue is a factor in 20% of high-risk incidents. Long-term exposure to fatigue is associated with health problems.