Human Factors - An ONRSR Case Study

Human Factors and the ONRSR Rail Safety Regulation Model

ONRSR is revising its enterprise-wide approach to rail safety regulation. This is leveraging the collective expertise and positive culture of the ONRSR team to ensure it is an influential, educational and engaging rail safety regulator. Importantly, articulating what we mean by intelligence-led, risk-based regulation and how we balance our regulatory activities across RSNL functions: monitor, investigate, engage and improve.

In support of the new Rail Safety Regulation Model released earlier this year, ONRSR is increasing its use of human factors in its work with operators. A three-person team does this by considering a system’s design and the interaction between people and its parts which is needed to make the system work well in practice. As such human factors are a key focus for ONRSR in its regulatory oversight and activities.

“All the things the regulator does we can add value to,” says ONRSR Human Factors Specialist, Joy Mitchell.

And it is by demonstrating the full application of the craft, beyond the common misconception that it’s merely the study of human error, that energises and excites Joy and her colleagues.

As Human Factors Specialist, Alison Gembarovski explains, the focus of the team’s work with the Australian rail industry is not about reflecting on the mistakes people make, but rather projecting forward and focusing on how the safety systems can be designed for them.

“How can you have safe railway operations if you haven’t considered the people in the system?” she says.

“It’s vital to factor people into design and make it easy for them to do the right thing, difficult to do the wrong thing and almost impossible to do the dangerous thing.

The Human Factors team has been involved in safety regulation since the inception of ONRSR including field activities, investigations, policy and guideline development and safety promotion. Building on these foundations, the team is now working even more closely and collaboratively right across ONRSR.

Chief Executive and National Rail Safety Regulator, Dr Natalie Pelham is a strong advocate for their role and knows its continued development as a regulatory tool is critical to the successful implementation of a systems approach for managing rail safety risks.

“They are key to our stated aim of regulating through a risk-based and intelligence led series of activities to build safety knowledge by providing actionable safety insights,” Dr Pelham said.

Monitor

The human factors team is supporting the provision of information to assist with compliance and improve rail safety management. Their expertise extends to looking at how rail transport operators can tailor the design and maintenance of their safety management systems (SMS) to ensure both the safety of their people and the pursuit of effective and efficient operations. In doing so they provide materials and advice on areas of focus for ONRSR’s Rail Safety Officers when they are undertaking audits, inspections and site visits across all sectors of the industry.

“We can help work with the operators to get the balance right between safety and productivity, and compliance with the law,” Joy Mitchell says.

“We are helping to demonstrate that it is possible to design a safety management system or any singular system in a way that actually benefits the people involved and I think that’s where Human Factors as a design discipline can really add value.”

The Human Factors team regularly engages in monitoring activities to support compliance and improvement in rail safety management.

Investigate

As ONRSR strengthens its investigative capability and processes under a new Statutory Compliance division, it is pursuing a greater focus on human factors as an investigative tool.

“Who are the people? What are the tasks? And what can go wrong or right? They are the three things that we ask about any sort of work,” Alison Gembarovski explains.

“We focus very much on how work is actually done, not about how people think the work is done which can be really important when something has gone wrong.”

Not only does this assist ONRSR in its rail safety investigations and efforts to understand the circumstances of an incident, but it is fundamental to helping the regulator provide timely and effective investigation outcomes and giving industry and associated stakeholders actionable information and insights that can help prevent recurrences.

Improve

As major rail projects, more sophisticated methods of operating, and safety innovations continue to come online at an unprecedented rate, ONRSR is responding by adapting its regulatory oversight to include a greater focus on human factors particularly early on in major rail projects when consideration of them can have a positive impact.

“That’s where human factors is best put - in design - and if we’re designing for the next 50 years we need to get it right now, and we need to make sure the operators integrate human factors into their systems, otherwise they’re going to miss the opportunities to optimise their systems,” says Alison Gembarovski.

“People often think when things are automated that the risk is engineered out, but if you don’t consider people when designing the automation, it can make it very difficult for people to be able to step back in if something does go wrong.”

And Joy Mitchell is confident that human factors, whether it be pursued by ONRSR or rail operators themselves, has the potential to dramatically improve railway operations and establish new safety benchmarks.

“In the proactive and preventative area is where we can have an influence on the design of systems and the design of work and the design of work environments,” she says.

Engage