Standardising safety engineering approaches in the UK railway industry

If not done correctly, safety analysis and assurance work can lead to significant project costs partly because of the inherent costs of undertaking these activities but perhaps more importantly because the use of ineffective processes can lead to key safety issues emerging late in the project lifecycle, requiring costly fixes or creating the inability to demonstrate safety (leading to costs associated with project overrun and delay). A project was undertaken to review current practice in safety engineering and analysis in Great Britain's (GB) railway industry to determine potential areas for developing guidance, refining processes, developing improved tools and techniques, and ensuring that opportunities created by changes in the legislative framework to improve processes are maximised. One particular finding of this work was that there is an opportunity to develop more standardised hazard lists, to be used across a range of projects. This would allow projects to make better use of the information in the industry Safety Risk Model (SRM) to develop safety targets, and undertake safety related project optioneering earlier in the lifecycle of a given project. It would also make safety analysis more repeatable and hence improve the efficiency with which it could be undertaken.