2. AusRAIL 2006: Railway Safety
Someone once asked me
‘are the lunatics running the asylum?’
Ian D Mash C.Eng
21 November 2006

3. New Rolling Stock

4. Contents Perceptions of Safety A Little History
The UK Railway: Structure & Processes
What is, and is not, a Safety Case?
UK Safety Approval Process
VAB and ISA
The ALARP Principle
Absolute or Relative Safety
Great Heck Accident
Questions

5. Rail Safety
The first passenger railway fatality came with the first passenger railway

6. Perceptions of Safety 31 January 2003 Waterfall Accident
Tangara G7 operating C311 left the tracks
6 Passengers killed
Driver killed
26 September 2004
16 people killed across Australia on the road system

7. Road & Rail Safety

8. UK Railways
British Railways ceased to exist as an integrated railway in early 1990s.
Privatisation brought:
Contractual separation at the Wheel / Rail interface;
Private Train Operators executing Franchises;
Safety Cases to describe Safety at all contractual boundaries;
Independent assessment of compliance to Standards.

9. Which bit is my problem?

10. What is a Safety Case?
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
It is possible to possess a document called a Safety Case and for there to be no safety case (i.e. there is no compelling safety argument). Kelly & Weaver 2002
It is the content of, and arguments contained in, a Safety Case that should be judged, rather than considering only if a document with this title exists for a given purpose.

11. An overview of the UK Approach
Engineering
Safety Case

12. Engineering Acceptance
GM/RT 2000
Independent VAB
Certificates for:
Design;
Construction;
Maintenance.
Complied with, or secured exemptions from all relevant standards

13. Safe because it complies…?
Compliance to a Standard or Specification does not mean it is safe!
Compliance is discrete (Pass / fail)
Safety is a relative concept

14. Independent Safety Assessment
Requirement of Infrastructure Owner
ISA must support every Safety Case submission if it is to be accepted by Infrastructure Owner
What safety benefit is gained compared to the cost of achieving that benefit?

15. The perennial question…
What else do we have to do before we can run our new train?

16. Let us dispel a myth…
Safety Approvals are not the role of the Engineering function, though they are a major supplier of resource and inputs
Relevant Approvals are a subset of the Contractual Deliverable
Good Engineering can help to secure Approvals, only good Project Management will actually deliver them
Relevant Approvals will always be on the Critical path:
If this is not the case, I would wager your critical path is wrong.

17. ALARP As Low as Reasonably Practicable
AS/NZS 4360: the cost of managing risks needs to be commensurate with the benefits derived from it
AS : 2006:
Next step would be to define and agree values for benefits accrued: to enable tolerability to be judged by Society.

18. Absolute or Relative Safety
To set the scene:
Early morning of Wednesday 28th February 2001
04h45 GNER express passenger train left Newcastle bound for London
04h17 a Class 66 Freight locomotive hauling 1000 tonnes (heavy freight in the UK context) left Immingham bound for Ferrybridge
A road driver of a Land Rover towing a trailer was en-route to Wigan on the motorway above
Then, tragically, the holes in the Swiss Cheese lined up

19. What happened…
Road vehicle and trailer left the motorway, and came to rest fouling the Up main line.
A Class 91 electric locomotive propelling 9 passenger carrying vehicles and a Driving Van Trailer (DVT) hit the obstacles at, or near line speed of 125 mph
The leading DVT derailed 15m past the impact, but proceeded upright and in line for a further 700m
A set of points associated with a siding deflected it into the path of the oncoming freight train
The freight train was doing 56 mph (within its limit of 60mph), and braked 7 seconds before the impact at 54.2mph with the passenger train

20. Consequences

21. What does this accident teach us?
All safety approvals were in place
HSE: ‘There was nothing that the railway industry could have reasonably done to prevent the collision’
HSE: ‘There is no evidence ... to suggest that there were any errors by railway staff or faults with the signalling, rolling stock or track involved with this collision’
10 dead (including 4 Railwaymen) and 70 injured
There is no such thing as absolute safety.

22. Recommendations
Ensure our industry railway only debates the ‘how’ and ‘when’ of railway safety.
Consider carefully which elements of the Safety Case regime from the UK will work for us (and which will not!)
Ensure it is the quality of the arguments in a Safety Case that are judged, rather than just compliance to standards.
Assign Project and Engineering resources to secure Approvals.
Become comfortable with ALARP, and Tolerability Levels.
Ensure your Safety Approvals are on your critical path.
Never believe that a risk can look after itself wherever it resides on your risk matrix.

23. Thank you for your attention. Any questions?
Mob: