Our Health & Safety Management System (H&SMS) sets out the framework and processes that we use to deliver our health and safety objectives and control health and safety risks.
The health and safety of our employees and others affected by our activities is assured through the effective design, construction, maintenance and operation of the rail network. The H&SMS therefore depends on, and is part of, the overall company management system and is underpinned by company standards, specifications and procedures.
Overview of the H&SMS
Our H&SMS, modelled on the structure shown below, gives us a thorough understanding of health and safety risks, enables planning and implementation of effective controls and measures the results to help us continuously learn and improve, driven by strong and committed leadership at every level of the organisation.
Leading
Leadership creates the vision, sets the strategic direction and inspires people to follow.
Managers at all levels are required to demonstrate clear commitment to health and safety, promote the right attitudes and behaviours throughout the workforce and drive continuous improvement.
Every manager is accountable for the health and safety performance of their own team.
Managers build fully engaged teams where everyone understands the their roles, objectives and processes, has sufficient resources, materials, equipment and information, is fit and competent and has appropriate feedback on their performance.
Understanding risk
A thorough understanding of health and safety risks is essential to manage our risks effectively.
We adopt a standardised approach to identify, evaluate and understand risks, making appropriate use of industry risk models and specialist tools and techniques. We apply standard safety decision criteria to provide consistency in the application of measures to reduce risks so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP).
Implementing controls
Arrangements for the effective control of risks are defined in the company standards, specifications and procedures. This includes the arrangements for effective design, construction, maintenance and operation of the network and specific arrangements for control of health and safety risks.
Measuring
We measure compliance with and the effectiveness of our health and safety management arrangements using a wide variety of techniques.
Measurement is based on leading indicators, which focus on control activities, and lagging indicators, based on safety performance outputs covering both personal and system safety. The data is analysed to produce safety intelligence for the business.
Learning
We use the knowledge derived from our these measurements, combined with planned and targeted research and external information sources, to review the effectiveness of our health and safety management and drive continuous improvement. This deepens our understanding of risk and helps us develop of systems and controls based on a philosophy of “predict and prevent”.