Rail Safety News Autumn 2013, Issue 9
Improvements in rail safety achieved under the Rail Safety Act 2006 (Vic)
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- Introducing OSCAT: A tool for understanding your organisation’s culture
Improvements in rail safety achieved under the Rail Safety Act 2006 (Vic)In 2013, the current rail safety legislation in Victoria, the Rail Safety Act 2006 (Vic), (RSA) will be repealed. It will be replaced with legislation to enable regulation under the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator and new local rail safety legislation. The RSA came into effect in August 2006 and represented a significant change in the way rail safety was regulated in Victoria at that time. The RSA gave rail operators and the regulator a new clear framework for managing rail safety by providing a number of overarching policy principles. The principles relate to shared responsibility, accountability for managing safety risks, integrated risk management, enforcement, transparency, consistency and stakeholder involvement. It required rail operators to be accredited. To achieve this, the operators need to have in place a safety management system that reflects the nature and scope of their operations and comply with it. The RSA encompasses all aspects of the rail network (including private sidings) and imposes obligations at a level commensurate with the risk to safety. Importantly, since the RSA came into effect, there have been significant improvements in the way safety is managed by rail operators. Many rail operators are demonstrating an improved safety maturity by proactively managing the risks to safety and engaging in continuous improvement programs. During the first three years of its operation, 36 rail operators transitioned to the new legislation and today that number has grown to 46. Transport Safety Victoria (TSV) has worked cooperatively with rail operators to support their transition to the RSA and ensure ongoing compliance with legislative requirements. The RSA introduced reporting requirements for rail incidents. Operators provide TSV with occurrence data which is analysed to identify trends and safety issues. TSV publishes quarterly reports on safety statistics based on this data. TSV has a risk based approach to the selection of rail compliance activities. We analyse information from a range of sources (including the occurrence data, investigation reports provided by rail operators and other organisations and Annual Safety Reports provided by rail operators) to identify areas of concern. Audit topics are selected and prioritized on the basis of the risks to safety. Audits undertaken by TSV have included:
As at the end of January 2013, a total of 120 safety audits, 63 national audits and 320 compliance inspections have been conducted since the RSA was enacted. A total of 937 non-compliance reports and 140 improvement notices have been issued by TSV’s transport safety officers between July 2006 and January 2013. Introducing OSCAT: A tool for understanding your organisation’s cultureSafety culture can generally be described as “the way things are done around here” with respect to safety. It encompasses the values, beliefs and attitudes that are held within the organisation and guide the way people behave in the workplace. It shapes the decisions people make, their priorities and the actions that they take. Safety culture has been implicated in several large-scale organisational accidents in Australia and overseas. Hidden (1989), for example, found that a 'poor safety culture' in British Rail was a 'key determinant' underlying the Clapham Junction train accident. As a result, safety culture improvement has been a topic of interest to the rail industry in recent years. In recognition of this, Transport Safety Victoria has partnered with the NSW Independent Transport Safety Regulator to develop a tool that will give rail organisations some insight into their own culture. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of organisational culture, strategies can be implemented to improve areas of culture that are known to affect safety outcomes. The Organisational Safety Culture Appraisal Tool (OSCAT) is the product of this collaboration. OSCAT uses scenario-based interviews to obtain information about operational aspects of an organisation’s safety culture. The information gathered using OSCAT provides a deep understanding of operational issues impacted by poor safety culture. It links questions to real events and increases the likelihood of obtaining open responses compared with other methods such as surveys. Due to the qualitative nature of the tool, it requires an organisation to dedicate appropriate time and resources. The tool is somewhat resource intensive and it is recommended that it be used on selected areas within an organisation where there may be specific concerns regarding safety culture. For example, an organisation might conduct a culture questionnaire on a regular basis. This type of survey reveals information about perceptions and attitudes rather than actual behaviours. An OSCAT appraisal might then be carried out to investigate in depth issues identified from the survey, from other significant safety issues or from changes in the organisation, for example, accidents, complaints, poor performance on safety performance indicators. This ensures that resources are allocated to where they are most needed and can achieve the best safety outcomes. TSV encourages rail organisations to make use of OSCAT. To gain the benefits of using the tool, the OSCAT documentation should be reviewed prior to its implementation to ensure that the chosen approach is appropriate for what the organisation wants to achieve. The tool requires some level of expertise to use. This includes expertise in behavioural interviewing and knowledge about organisational culture. The tool comprises the following materials:
If you would like to access the tool or would like further information about safety culture, please contact TSV’s Human Factors Manager Elizabeth Grey at Elizabeth.Grey@transportsafety.vic.gov.au Directory: data -> assets -> word doc -> 0016 word doc -> This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the Commonwealth word doc -> Commonwealth of Australia 2002 word doc -> Commonwealth of Australia 2000 word doc -> Priority Existing Chemical word doc -> Rail safety news issue 6 – October 2011 word doc -> Review of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: Identifying 0016 -> Cad and 3d animation A/t course Type 2 0016 -> Careers News No 17 (Also available on the Hawker College Website and Google Classrooms) 0016 -> One page action plan for (insert name and date here) Download 118.58 Kb. Share with your friends:
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