Transforming rail through collaboration - the key benefits

The impact of Covid 19 on rail was huge. Rail had to maintain a service for both passengers and freight. But social distancing was required of society at large. Although this showed the strong social value that rail provides, it also confronted individual companies with many challenges. How could they operate safely during a pandemic? Everyone had these challenges so collaboration was the best approach. The result was shared risk assessments and new guidance for pandemic specific tasks.

Our collaborative approach to public health continues to be relevant, even if we aren’t in a pandemic right now. Our public health resources are designed for the whole industry and can help you with a wide range of emerging public health threats.

The commercial drivers of freight suggest that collaboration will be counterproductive. But when companies collaborate, they can tackle common challenges more effectively and efficiently. The National Freight Safety Group brings together diverse industry categories such as freight, other non-passenger train operators, infrastructure managers and owners, and RSSB. The Office of Rail and Road is an essential observer. This fosters a holistic approach to addressing common challenges and sharing expertise and resources.

When industry stakeholders work together, they can leverage each other's strengths. This leads to more innovative and effective solutions. For instance, infrastructure managers can provide insights on capacity constraints and maintenance schedules. Freight operators can offer practical perspectives on operational efficiencies and safety protocols.

Collaboration improves safety and enhances operational efficiency and reduces costs. As freight volumes increase, the need for coordinated responses becomes even more crucial. A collaborative approach ensures that all players in the freight sector move forward together, creating a safer and more efficient rail network for everyone.

Cross industry data collection and analysis to improve safety may seem like a no brainer now, but it is based on a fundamentally collaborative approach to that data. Here’s to the Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS), the Safety Risk Model (SRM), and the Precursor Indicator Model (PIM) for all the insights they produce. These insights need the data that industry agrees to share. That commitment to share data, and repeatedly sharing good quality data, is collaboration in action.

Over the years data sharing and data analysis has revealed trends in performance and early signs of new issues. Tracking these in tandem with awareness of other activities helps practitioners at all levels identify the effectiveness of those activities. They can target where safety needs to improve.

We look forward to this collaborative spirit continuing as SMIS evolves. There will be new collaborative approaches to reduce defects too, like the National CCS Defect Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (DRACAS).

Collaboration — over data, over shared programmes — is also improving health and wellbeing. The new Rail Health and Safety Strategy intensifies the legal duty to cooperate. It requires all in rail to have a ‘collaboration beyond cooperation’ approach to their work. Sharing and analysing data about health will help put ‘health on a par with safety’. So we are collaborating with industry members to develop a new health and wellbeing dashboard. This aims to enhance the quality of life of rail employees.

Rail Wellbeing Live is also the result of collaboration in rail. It’s an annual event and RSSB is proud to be one of the 17 partners involved this year. There are over 40 sessions. Many are at times to suit those working night shifts. It offers practical resources and inspirational sessions to improve people’s wellbeing. Whether you want to know how to get a good night’s sleep, or how men think about mental health, this collaborative event is for you.