Management of System Safety on the Railtrack West Coast Route Modernisation

Abstract

For many years the Railway has improved its safety performance on an incremental basis. This has been very successful and by most general comparisons it has led to the Railway becoming one of the safest forms of transport. The downside to this approach is that the safety is delivered in a very unstructured fashion which makes estimating the benefit of any further changes difficult.

The West Coast Route Modernisation (WCRM) Programme is, at this time, one of the largest construction programmes in Europe. A programme of this size is rightly required to deliver and to demonstrate a quantifiable improvement in safety.

This paper describes the problems and processes involved in transitioning the Railway from its traditional step-wise approach of safety management to a structured analytical method of delivering system safety.