CPA Bulletin

www.cpa.uk.net CPA Bulletin > February/March 2021 45 RAIL PLANT ASSOCIATION: 2 to do their work safely and efficiently. Not to assume they already know. As the OTP experts, the POS provider has a legal duty and commercial obligation. It would be commercially unsound to advise a customer they need OTP that cost £100 p/h when the tasks can be safely undertaken with a cheaper OTP. Likewise, advising the hire of five items of OTP for a job that can be completed safely and efficiently with fewer, is not exactly meeting the spirit of the standard. Overall, most POS sites are planned and executed very well. However, it would be fair to say some customers have great expectations from the POS provider. Examples include “we hired your POS, so you are responsible for making sure the job gets done”, or “your POS Rep was on site, he/she should have made sure OTP worked quicker”. And so on…. Yes, the POS provider takes some responsibility of the OTP operations, but not to the extent of the two examples above. POS providers are clearly responsible for doing their part in the planning of OTP use on site. This is documented in the OTP Plan. OTP Plans can be simple or complex, depending on the site complexity or tasks to be undertaken with OTP, or even by the numbers of OTP in use. The plan should also determine if more than one POS Rep is required for the site. • Understanding roles and responsibilities of POS staff The POS provider is responsible for providing OTP, operator, POS Rep and machine/crane controller. POS Rep is an ‘assurance role’. Some of POS Rep’s duties are to monitor operations of OTP follow the OTP Plan, to be the single point of contact between the site management and OTP staff, and to help find solutions, update the OTP Plan etc in response to change on site. He/she should not be undertaking any other duty (with one exception, where only one item of OTP is working, the POS Rep can also be the machine/crane controller). The POS Rep must be Primary Sponsored by the POS provider and directly employed, meaning agency provision of POS Reps is not permitted. The P521 Standard requires POS providers and PCs/Clients to plan OTP works together. To meet this, some POS Providers employ POS Planners (who produce lift plans, OTP Plans, briefings etc for the sites). Those planners take information from POS Reps who carry out site visits, white board meetings etc, and from customers (who will hold details in the Work Package Plan, Safe System of Work Pack, etc). • POS Rep competence Currently each POS Provider trains and assesses their own POS Reps in-house. Network Rail’s next step is to create a Sentinel based POS Rep competence. It is likely to be many months away, and we will do our best to keep you updated on that. Before we bid you farewell, please remember to check out our Good Practice Guides, including the one for POS at https://www.cpa.uk.net/rpa-good- practice-guides/