CPA Bulletin

44 CPA Bulletin > August 2021 www.cpa.uk.net rail plant association RAIL PLANT ASSOCIATION: 1 More good news. Literally millions in the UK have now received their 2nd vaccination protecting themselves against Covid-19 and helping prevent the virus mutating further. There’s a few more miles to go, but we’re rolling down the track in the right direction. So, please follow government guidelines and hopefully we won’t suffer any delays on the way. Operational challenges Our theme to discuss operational challenges has been warmly received over the past five articles, and for those of you who have given feedback, thank you very much, we really do appreciate it. As a quick update, we discussed: • Delivery Point Management & Plant Fitter Competence • On-track Plant Operations Scheme (POS) • Fatigue Management • On-track Plant Reliability (Rail PPS) This time we want to touch on ‘safety behaviours’ of On-track Plant (OTP) staff working on railway sites. The subject of behaviour is far too complex for me, your humble narrator, to speak of in any depth. But we, the RPA, feel this is a topic that needs mentioning now, due to the concerning number of incidents and accidents involving OTP. Safety has to start at the top. We don’t doubt companies that promote safety as their number one priority, are being honest, and genuinely do not want accidents to occur. Yet they do. The questions we need to ask ourselves right now are: • What can we do short term to help stop OTP incidents? • What long term solutions could we introduce to make OTP operations safer? The answer to these is for the industry to decipher. But when you reflect on what behaviours you can influence, consider our OTP operator community. Some of you may recall back in the May edition we wrote: • It’s worth noting, the OTP operator community has changed over the past two decades. At the turn of the millennium, most OTP operators had a full-time post with their employers. This was achievable in a railway that offered many mid-week shifts to support the weekend shifts. The ratio 20 years ago would be close to 90% full-time OTP operator to 10% ‘zero hour’ operators looking to top up their midweek work earnings outside the railway industry. Today, the ratios have closely reversed. Mid-week shifts are few and far between and employers simply can’t afford to keep operators sat at home on pay waiting for that weekend shift. It’s important to realise influencing behaviours will be much harder to achieve with zero-hour staff who work on the odd shift at weekends than with full-time staff. Especially since those zero-hour workers go straight to site on hire, meaning the OTP employer is unlikely to meet their operators at all. There are other factors too, such as: • Selection of OTP workers - We are all different and holding a specific competence doesn’t make a person ‘right for the job’. As employers should we be looking beyond competence, for example, psychometric testing? • Fatigue management – We’ve already written about this in a previous issue, but it is worth noting here since it has been an underlying cause in many events and is linked to human factors / behaviours. We should also mention that some behaviours on site are driven by time- pressure (be that actual or perceived). Over-run risks are real concerns and can influence site managers/supervisors’ behaviours, resulting in them focusing on the over-run threat rather than maintaining site safety and good on-site change management. Other time pressures are however, perceived rather than actual. Historic accident investigations detailed behaviours changed for personal gain, (for example, the opportunity to finish early and go home). This aspect, also known as ‘Job and knock’, has long been a reward for finishing planned works before the planned shift time ending. In the actual scenario where an overrun is imminent, how supportive would the ALL ABOARD! Hello RPA article readers and welcome. Summer is here and our nation is opening once again after another Covid lockdown. At the time of writing, the European football championships and the Tour de France have started. Dare I predict England to win? Or perhaps something closer to my heart, Mark Cavendish beating Eddy Merckx’s Tour de France world record of 34 stage wins. Fingers crossed!