Challenging your COSS's Safe System of Work welcomed?
27 Apr 2009
April may be here and the clocks may have been changed, but as all good gardeners know sharp frosts the kind that makes sleeper backs slippery, are still with us and likely to be so into next month.
Working in the dark
My concerns remain focussed on the ways in which our industry and indeed the management of it, are motivated to get the job done. Sadly for many this is stronger than their commitment to work safely and stick to the rules.
At Kennington Junction last May a Signalling team leader was struck by a passing passenger train in the darkness at 2147 at night and subsequently lost a leg. He and the man working with him could very easily have lost their lives.
Network Rail has now published an animated reconstruction on their Safety Central website. I recommend it. Essentially a team of three, COSS (Controller Of Site Safety), Lookout and one other were testing points. They knew the area and the testing job was a regular exercise, so no briefing occurred and the Lookout sited himself two tracks away in the fourfoot of the Goods Loop for better sighting at around 2040. By 2145 it had become dark.
The signaller had been told the work was completed; they only had to refit the point box cover. Then the lookout warned of a slow passing freight train on the line alongside them. Whilst it was passing a 90 mph passenger train came the other way on their track and struck the COSS.
Speak up or do the work?
I commend the DVD "Speak Up", the latest in Network Rail's Safety 365 Campaign, and this too is available on Safety Central. The DVD cover carries the message "it's only worth having a voice if you can use it?" It tells the story of a track maintenance gang under pressure from their overstretched supervisor to complete repairs to a series of twist and other track faults.
There is little enthusiasm for working beyond their normal day from either the ganger or his men, including one suffering from a strained leg who doesn't want to take time off. There is no available RIMINI (Risk Minimisation) plan for the work but the office bound supervisor urges them to get on and finish the work, insisting that the area and job are well understood so all they need to do is change the date on the old one!
This particular job is on a curve with limited sighting, but the lookout volunteers to help out by taking on the job without an advanced lookout. No one in the gang challenges this arrangement although they are aware of the sighting problem. The inevitable happens.
Would you have spoken up?
I have no gripe with the sentiments expressed on Safety Central - "Everyone working on the railway has the right to refuse work on the grounds of health and safety", and "If you have safety concerns stop work immediately, ensuring that doing so does not endanger others, move to a position of safety and contact the person in charge explaining why you have stopped work".
But how realistic are these sentiments? If the man in charge is senior to you, more experienced and works for Network Rail or one of its principal contractors would you want to risk being stood down as a subcontractor for being uncooperative? The answer I suggest lies in work planning, RIMINI and more generally in a change in working culture.
Red zone working with lookouts- the method of last resort?
It is easy to forget that red zone working with merely lookout protection should be the method of last resort. Is Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate accurately and actively monitoring green and red zone working? Is green zone working yet becoming the norm and if not why not?
Whatever happened to automatic track warning systems for working red zone? Is the time yet right for us to put a ban, at least for main lines, on look out protected red zone working? Will the remodelled Reading incorporate plug in points to facilitate automatically protected red zone working? If not why not?
I have so far seen very little about the accident that occurred on 7th December near Stevenage. A member of track staff was working within a possession when he was struck by a train passing on an adjacent line, albeit travelling at reduced speed. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch Inquiry is still ongoing.
Safety Critical Voice Training
The free availability of this programme funded by Network Rail has ended. From now on companies wanting to get their staff trained will have to pay for the training in the usual way. In June of this year a new programme of training for Network Rail's own signalling and direct maintenance staff begins.
In their advice letter we are all warned, "it is our long term intention to roll out this training as mandatory and record it on Sentinel but it is not mandatory at present". I understand that a two or three year timescale is envisaged before it becomes compulsory.
Best practice
Courtesy of Network Rail's Safety Trucks, we have a degree of anonymous access to track staff's views. Can they help? It is excellent to note that recently Yorkshire Water booked a truck to try the system out having come to the conclusion that their use is "best practice".
The Sentinel System I contend is also a good example of best practice and is ten years old this month! The National Competency Control Agency now provides sponsors with no fewer than 27 pages of detailed information on its systems. I remember when our industry was still using easily forged little orange cardboard cards. In some hostelries passable forgeries could be bought and a doctor could be found who would sign your medical details away if you bought him a drink and crossed his palm with a few notes.
We may complain about the cost of the cards, but the security and integrity of the system is well proven and it continues to rise to meet new challenges. My only regret is that there are still parts of our industry, which remain outside the system.
Changes to competencies and records
In a recent Network Rail letter we were advised that from September this year Protection Controllers, Engineering Supervisors, Persons in Charge of Possessions and Senior Persons in Charge of possessions who do not also hold COSS competency will need to be COSS trained, although they will not be subjected to the usual probationary period for obvious reasons. In their advice letter Network Rail advise that fewer than 250 individuals will be affected by this change.
Also new from March 30th is the new framework for On-Track Plant Operators. They must now keep an up to date work experience logbook, but because the bespoke ones are not yet available the instruction stipulates that in the meantime operators should use the existing Machine and Crane Controllers ones instead. Obviously the use of operator logbooks has been well planned!
Quick or too quick?
Two recent Safety Bulletins are worthy of mention. The first relates to the "Quick Hitches" fitted to some On-track Plant. We are told that in two recent incidents there have been "inadvertent attachment releases".
The 21st March Bulletin advises that only semi-automatic types have to be used with a safety pin and stresses that it is essential that operators get out of the cab and personally make sure the hitch is properly engaged before they attempt to lift or use the attachment. Also that it is the operator's responsibility to "insert the safety pin where appropriate."
Raised checkrails and wide wheels
A second Safety Bulletin refers to the recent derailment of a wide wheeled road/rail excavator/crane on a swing bridge. Permanent Way and Bridge Engineers are all very aware of the challenges posed by various long timber or weigh beam arrangements on bridge structures. (I recall too many similar derailments of freight trains as well as rail-mounted plant from my days as a track engineer.)
The swing bridge had been fitted with the Edilon embedded rail system. The cause of the derailment is made clear by the advice given in the Bulletin. It stresses the need to check on raised check-rails at the planning stage.
Plastic sleepers, ballast and concrete
We have just begun the new Office of Rail Regulation control period for Network Rail. Arguably this, and the beginning of the new financial year, are even more pertinent for us than January 1st.
Slips, trips and falls continue to dominate our accident records and we all know that lifting heavy objects comes a close second. I was interested to hear about the trial use of plastic sleepers as an alternative to the 185,000 timber ones Network Rail uses every year.
Maybe we should look at reducing our use of ballast and concrete sleepers too? Without them we would surely reduce our carbon footprint, benefit the environment and reduce accidents at the same time.
Finally, and on a personal note I have for some time appreciated the efforts and dedication of Network Rail's Andy Dunnett who has had the unenviable task of managing the Safety Improvement Teams, seeking to meet the demands of Peter Henderson's Project Safety Leadership Group.
He is now relinquishing that role so as to concentrate full time on their "Trackworker Safety Project". I wish him well and would urge him to include doing all that he can to generate real enthusiasm for safer working as the top priority of all who plan, manage and work on track.