Communicating safety-related information

This information may include:

• information about the current state of the railway;

• information about how systems are used in practice;

• information about the current state of work in progress – especially where responsibility is transferred between shifts or teams;

• information about changes to standards and procedures;

• information about an incident;

• problems you find in someone else’s work; and

• assumptions about someone else’s work which are important to safety.

Communications within an organisation should be two-way. In particular, the people leading your organisation will need to make sure that they get the information that they need to take good decisions about safety and then make sure that these decisions are communicated to the people who need to know about them. Your organisation should pass on any relevant information about hazards and safety requirements to its suppliers.

General guidance Safety issues do not respect organisational boundaries. Effective communications and co-ordination are often needed to resolve them. There is a legal duty on those involved in the UK mainline railway to co-operate in the interests of safety. For example, Group Standard GE/RT8250, ‘Safety Performance Monitoring and Defect Reporting of Rail Vehicles and Plant and Machinery’ [F.8] requires some Railway Group members to share details of safety-related defects with other members of the Railway Group.

The sources of information needed to take safety decisions may exist anywhere within your organisation, such as a report from a maintenance technician at the front line. Alternatively, information may come in to your organisation at any point from somewhere else, such as a Transport Operator, or from the general public. Where information about safety risk could have wider implications, your organisation should have communication systems in place that allow you to pass the information to someone who has the authority to decide what action to take.

This may require communication with other organisations that look after parts of the railway. For example, an axle defect that you find in a railway vehicle may have implications on other vehicles, including those that are looked after by other maintenance organisations. Decisions taken by management need to be communicated to those at the front line who have to implement the decision. You should communicate information throughout your organisation to make sure that your standards and procedures are properly implemented, particularly when work requirements change.

Decisions taken at the front line need to be communicated to management, for example, a decision to allow degraded equipment to temporarily remain in service until a replacement can be planned. When you communicate safety information, you should consider the needs of the recipient and you should choose a method and a time that reflects the urgency and value of the information relative to any other information that needs to be communicated. The guidance in this chapter is applicable to all phases in the System Lifecycle.

This chapter is written for managers and engineers who have safety-related information that is required by someone else or who need to work or liaise with others in the interest of safety.