2024 achievements

Here are some highlights from our recent contributions. Our work covers the breadth of industry need, with activity in each strategic business area.

Safer rail

We’re focused on activities across our industry fatigue groups to help our members manage their fatigue risk. In June 2024 our fatigue forum enabled industry members to contribute to fatigue management priorities. We shared ongoing work at our fatigue webinar in October 2024. Analysis on the 2023 industry fatigue survey continues. The ORR relaunched their Managing Staff Fatigue Guidance in September 2024 using a ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act’ framework. This will help to inform our work moving forwards.

Our biggest fatigue project has continued to be the driver attention and alertness monitoring technology trial. We hope to be collecting live data using this technology in early 2025 and will produce reports once live monitoring has started.

In 2024, our extreme weather planning tool, PRIMA, achieved important milestones. It helps to minimise disruption due to heavy rainfall while keeping risk as low as is reasonably practicable. Speed profiles derived from PRIMA’s outputs have now been approved by operations teams in the North West and Central region of Network Rail. The result is less disruption to the operational railway during extreme rainfall than that previously caused by the application of blanket speed restrictions on the Preston to Gretna section of the West Coast Mainline. Currently, the Scottish region is in the process of defining their speed profiles using PRIMA for many of their routes too.

Harmonised rail

There’s been a huge collaborative effort by industry and RSSB on revisions to the National Technical Specification Notices (NTSNs). And when we say ‘huge’, we mean in the region of three quarters of a million pounds in RSSB and industry cost. Plus, collectively, thousands of hours attending meetings and reviewing documents. In February 2024, RSSB provided DfT with the industry’s recommendation for revisions to NTSNs. This sought to preserve the benefits of continuing to align with the EU when this makes sense, while retaining specific cases that allow a different approach in Britain as appropriate.

The DfT are using the recommendations to inform revised NTSNs that they will publish, hopefully before the end of 2024. Nonetheless, the gargantuan work on this task — by both industry and us — should be celebrated. It’s a testament to rail’s collaborative spirit, and the ways this can deliver savings. We suspect the costs of RSSB facilitating this work on industry’s behalf are much cheaper than the alternative of using a consultancy. Plus there are also many benefits of our unique range of in-house expertise and independent perspective. So thank you: we couldn’t have done it without you!

Future rail

The Freight Safe Programme (FSP) commissioned our Futures Lab team to deliver a priority project to develop an emerging risks horizon scanning service. We presented a minimum viable product to FSP steering group in September 2024. Early-stage production has begun.

Emerging risks are uncertain. So the horizon scanning approach aims to identify potential risks to enable FSP and freight operating companies to decide their relevance and whether to monitor or investigate further.

The service goals are to provide a strategic perspective, help identify shared emerging risks for the whole sector, and enable thinking on potential implications if those risks materialise.

Healthier rail

We were proud to launch industry’s Rail Health and Safety Strategy in summer 2024. It was the culmination of a great deal of work by industry to identify the best ways to advance health and safety. It has three key principles. These are improving performance and accessibility, finding better ways of managing safety risks, and improving the environmental conditions for staff. It covers specific areas of interest, like asset management or level crossings, but also identifies common solutions. And collaboration is emphasised throughout, as a way to pool expertise and gain cost savings.

Efficient rail

We’re always pleased when our products and services increase the efficiency of essential tasks. A good example is the new Route Availability Calculator. This is free for members. It’s a ground-breaking tool that that makes this essential but laborious calculation quicker and easier. It uses the methodology described in the Railway Group Standard GERT8006 Route Availability Number for Assessment of Compatibility between Rail Bridges and Underline Vehicles. Instead of doing the calculations themselves, users can now enter data into the calculator. This helps them when generating the Route Availability number for each vehicle or train. Guidance about data preparation, and worked examples, are provided with the tool on our website.

Sustainable Rail

We are using our expertise to help the industry reduce its emissions. We’ve supported train operating companies and Network Rail to prepare their Air Quality Improvement Plans. Soon, we will assess the likely effect of the proposed measures to predict future air quality at stations. This will help inform Government policy. We also help the industry through professional development at each Air Quality Working Group session. Members of that group find this very useful.

These examples show some of the many ways in which we’ve dedicated ourselves to helping industry in 2024. We look forward to continuing our work to promote a safer, more efficient railway.