A Safety Critical Situation
“If a pilot flies from Heathrow to Bangkok, he does not change languages as he crosses continents. The same should apply to an EWS driver taking a train from London to Edinburgh.”
If someone asked you to bring the flashers or to turn off the juice, would you know what they meant? Or would someone doing your job on the other side of the country know? And if someone asked you what safety critical communications are, would you know how to respond?
Answer: all communications on the network are critical to safety.
Cue the launch last September of a six month pilot training scheme which is taking frontline staff in Kent back to basics. The one-day sessions provide an opportunity to discuss why training is needed and the best way to communicate this when the programme is rolled out across the UK.
The scheme in Kent is being delivered by MABway Ltd, a small training company of ex-servicemen, who are combining years of experience training the armed forces and emergency services with feedback from a rail industry working group.
“This is not a training package that has simply been taken off the shelf. We have spoken to over 1000 of you out on the network. We are delivering what the industry wants,” says trainer Mark O’Reilly.
Building on the Network Rail initiative to install recording devices in each signal box, and the work of the SCCFG, the programme aims to establish a regular system of training and assessment that will help prevent incidents, save lives and reduce costs.
A former pilot with the Army and trainer Paul Dutton explains, “A pilot needs certain qualifications in communications before he can fly 300 people and yet the operations staff who can take responsibility for up to 1,000 people on the railway don’t.”
“This is an industry built on trust. The passenger trusts the driver; the driver trusts the signaller; the signaller trusts the maintenance contractors and so on.”
But trust is not assuming that things have been done. Trust is not taking things for granted; these are key messages in a scheme that aims to help set the standard across the industry: “Even if you’re in your fourth night of possession together, you should still communicate properly. The only assumption that you should make is that the person you are talking to does not know what you are talking about.”
“We all know the rules,” says Mark, “We all know how we should communicate. When it comes to watching football, we don’t waste time discussing the rules of the match but how the footballers are breaking them.”
“What’s more, footballers train all week and play only once at the weekend. Soldiers train for years and may only go to war once. Continuous assessment is crucial.”
And the best way to assess your work is to face your harshest critics: yourself and your peers. The workshops build up to role play exercises based on real incidents, and use voice recordings to show poor examples of communication. Criticism of each other is encouraged!
The course focuses on leadership, encouraging everyone to demonstrate personal standards and moral courage, Mark adds, “Leadership is doing what’s right when nobody is looking. Leadership is maintaining the standard of communication when you know that you are not being recorded.”
“You don’t have to be the best driver or the best signaller to be a leader. Leadership is built on the confidence that you get when know what is right. Stick to your decision if you believe it is the right thing to do. It is frontline staff that will be leading this step-change in the industry.”
The pilot will continue until spring.