As we celebrate Rail Safety Week, here at AARC Professional Services, we’re proud to play our part in building on railway tradition and good practice, working with rail clients to move beyond basic compliance in health, safety and welfare to real innovation and sustainability. This approach applies to our backroom products, such as helping Amey Infrastructure Wales/ Seilwaith Amey Cymru (AIW – Infrastructure Manager for the Core Valley Lines) with its safety authorisation for the South Wales Metro, as well as providing a project operational interface service and ‘hands on’ training for its signallers, electrical control room operators and incident officers.
Competence of frontline staff is at the heart of safety management systems, so we were delighted to have been asked to help out AIW with the development and delivery of training, based on risk-based training needs analysis, integration of non-technical skills and internal quality assurance. We used the same process for Scotland’s Railway to develop training packages for Radio Electronic Token Block and Scottish Region Tokenless Block signallers.
Health and safety management systems are not always the easiest documents to write, digest and apply on the ground and can sometimes stifle innovation. So, we were pleased, although challenged, to write successful exemption, certification and authorisation applications for East Lancashire Railway to enable it to run at higher speeds for testing vehicles and vehicle-borne equipment, including innovative laser and plasma rail treatment technologies. Looking ahead, this joint working between heritage and main-line operators and their suppliers may further mitigate the risks of rail head contamination, as highlighted in the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) report – Collision Between Passenger Trains at Salisbury Tunnel Junction 2021.
Different but equally challenging was the opportunity to help Network Rail remodel its overarching health and safety management system, which is to be launched during Rail Safety Week, followed by the production of a health and safety guide for its System Operator function.
To coincide with Rail Safety Week 2024, we’ll also be going to the IOSH Railway Conference on 27th June to find out more from the speakers about how we can further integrate stakeholder working, as well as encouraging innovation and safety culture within our own business and the services which we provide. And if that wasn’t enough, we also have a Stage 1 ISO 9001 Quality Management System certification audit to help everyone here at AARCPS keep the wheels of continuous improvement turning!
Finally, please let us know how we can help you to keep health, safety, innovation and sustainability at the forefront of rail policy and practice.
