Saving costs from long-term risks

Rail confronts long-term risks that affect the way it operates and plans for the future. Our work is helping you save costs with longer-term issues.

Easier cost-benefit analysis

When making a safety-related decision, you need to be able to balance costs with benefits and to have confidence that your decision is based on a robust approach. You also need to know that you’re spending finite budgets in a way that ensures safety while representing good value for money. Several years ago, we launched a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) tool. This gives a formal method to support safety-related decisions and is based on our ‘Taking Safe Decisions’ framework.

This CBA tool has already helped industry understand what is reasonably practicable and avoid unnecessary costs when making safety-related decisions. However, a refresh would make it easier to use and reduce industry costs from having to perform a CBA assessment from scratch. So, we’re currently converting the old spreadsheet-based tool into a web-based tool which will improve usability. We’re also putting all the necessary guidance in one document, so users don’t need to go to many different websites to get the information they need. And we’re designing the updated tool to be usable without expensive training beforehand.

The CBA guidance and tool are key to help members apply the Taking Safe Decisions framework and principles in a robust and consistent way. The refresh comes in parallel with the development of new online training in how to apply Taking Safe Decisions.

As a result of these changes, more users will be able to use the tool, more easily. We look forward to launching the updated CBA tool in summer 2025 and its increasing use by industry.

Avoiding financial penalties from extreme weather delays

Climate change means that extreme weather is here to stay and will become more frequent. Heavy rainfall can lead to landslips and debris on the line. Blanket Speed Restrictions have been applied to reduce the risk of derailments, but they can also lead to service disruption, resulting in knock-on safety risks to other services and parts of the network. These can cause additional problems, such as costs resulting from delays, and frustrated passengers and staff. The industry needs a more focused response to maintain safety and deliver a higher performing service.

PRIMA, or Proportionate Risk Response to Implementing Mitigating Speed to Assets, is already helping to safely improve performance and reduce costs. We developed and trialled PRIMA in collaboration with Network Rail. This tool helps route planners to decide in advance what speed restrictions should be applied on particular sections of each route when there is heavy rainfall. When there’s very heavy rain, they can use that plan to target the optimum speed restrictions to the relevant parts of the route. This reduces risk and delivers improved performance. The tool has already been trialled in two different Network Rail regions, and we look forward to it being rolled out across the network.

We’re also developing the tool by adding strong winds as an option. This further strengthens rail’s ability to run effective services even during the severe weather caused by climate change, without incurring disproportionate costs arising from unnecessary delays.

Looking to the future

There has always been a need to balance safety, performance, and cost implications when making decisions which can impact the whole railway system. This is complex enough when you are trying to address challenging questions around risks which are well understood and in a railway environment of today. However, if you want to understand how the railway system would react to changes and emerging risks of the future it’s even more complex. For future risks, you need different tools and techniques to explore and understand what good looks like.

Our Futures Lab, system safety and health, and research teams are working together on the Future Risk Modelling Programme to understand how the current analysis and modelling capabilities can be enhanced. This will enable us to answer questions like:

• What is the true cost of safety?
• How do safety measures interact with cost and performance implications?
• What is a proportionate response to a risk that is growing and become more uncertain in the future?

However, the ultimate question is ‘How can we make improvements on the railway more affordable?’.

Standards reduce costs because they harmonise the way things are done across the whole industry. Our work on safety is about making safety more affordable and ensures that we respond proportionately to the risks we face. Research fills knowledge gaps which can shine the light on how we can use our existing and new technology effectively. This way we can improve safety, reduce costs, and improve performance. Futures Lab allows the sector to test ideas and new solutions as well as explore what new and emerging risks we should gear up and prepare for. That way we can start to develop the most cost-effective responses today and avoid future costs due to lack of readiness. We’re proud to be developing analytical tools that will help the whole industry grapple with the emerging future effectively.