Friday, June 26, 2026

Safety Message: Competency Management

The safety of Australia’s railways relies heavily on the competency of rail safety workers. Effective competency management ensures that individuals performing safety-critical tasks have the required skills and knowledge to operate safely. It is a key control for a variety of rail safety risks.

ONRSR is highlighting practices that can help ensure rail transport operators meet the Rail Safety National Law (RSNL) requirements for competence, and provision of information, training, instruction and supervision.

The following good practices establish a basis for competency management:

• Defining minimum competency requirements for a worker to undertake a role
• Defining minimum competency requirements for a worker to undertake a task
• Providing adequate systems, procedures, training and assessments to support rail safety workers
• Using procedures and requirements as detailed in the safety management system (SMS) of the rolling stock operator or rail infrastructure manager to support the maintenance of competency.

A good practice approach includes multiple layers of defence so that human error does not lead to an incident. This means implementing effective engineering or elimination controls rather than administrative controls wherever possible. Training is an administrative control while systems and procedures should be designed to support rail safety workers to undertake their job safely.

​Competency management principles

To manage competence effectively, operators should have procedures and processes in place for:

• Recruitment to ensure you hire for competencies and capabilities and that competencies are verified when recruiting. This also applies to contracted staff – safety risk can not be contracted out.
• Job and task analysis to define minimum competency requirements for each role.
• Training needs analysis for employees and contractors (including requirements for refresher training and assessment).
• Risk-based training needs analysis developed for safety related work.
• Recording competencies and training outcomes in a centralised system for easy access and monitoring. The system should include management of expiration dates and scheduling refresher training.
• Actively reviewing and updating competency requirements when introducing new risks, systems, processes or equipment.
• Maintaining and monitoring competence through a regular training regime, systems that provide access to critical information and procedures and having a supportive work environment. For example, usable technologies, manager/team support, appropriate tools and equipment, requirements for re-assessment, and integration with rail safety worker development plans.
• Supervision and monitoring to ensure works are undertaken safely and in accordance with procedures and to gather evidence that necessary assessments have been undertaken to maintain up to date qualifications.
• Maintaining a positive safety culture to support competency maintenance across the organisation and shared expectations of competence. This can include opportunities for mentoring and knowledge sharing across teams.

Components of competency

The RSNL requires rail transport operators to ensure that each rail safety worker who carries out rail safety work has the competence to carry out that work. Competency can be defined, and needs to be considered, in several ways. This includes:

• Minimum educational competencies: base tertiary and trade-based tertiary qualifications and/or degrees. The competence of a rail safety worker must be assessed in accordance with any qualification and units of competence recognised under the Australian Quality Framework (AQF) applicable to that rail safety work so far as is reasonably practicable.
  
• Sample qualifications:
  > Electrical signalling qualifications: Certificate 3 Electrotechnology Electrician (UEE30820) and Certificate IV in Electrical - Rail Signalling (UEE41220 or UEE41223)
  > Attained competencies:
  - Track: TLIB3100 Visually Inspect Track Infrastructure
  - Rolling stock: TLIB3021A Conduct Train Roll-by Inspection
  > Network Controllers such as TLI42215 Certificate IV in Rail Network Control
  > Rail Safety Managers TLI42415 Certificate IV in Rail Safety Management
  
• Sample licences:
  > White card (general construction induction card)
  > Rail Safety Worker card
  > High Risk Work Licences (HRWL) (e.g. forklift, boiler, crane).
  
• Task-based competencies: required for a worker to hold and perform the specific role. These competencies can help build domain knowledge through identifying knowledge, skills and abilities. They should also identify all safety aspects required to undertake the role. A failure to state the knowledge or skills requirements to competently undertake a particular domain-based task can have adverse impacts on rail network safety, worker safety and rail network operations.
  
• Non-technical skills: relate to social, cognitive, and personal skills that can enhance the way workers carry out technical skills, tasks and procedures. These skills can be included as part of your task-based competencies and recruitment system. It is important to capture these skills as they can be contributors to incidents. Some examples of non-technical skills include teamwork, communication, leadership, decision making, and self-management.

In summary

Good practice includes:

• Job/position descriptions written with competency requirements embedded. This includes identifying which roles require specialist or in-depth competencies.

• Conducting job and task analyses to understand the tasks associated with a role, safety risks and competency requirements. Workers who undertake those tasks should be consulted to ensure all risks and tasks associated with the activity are identified and assessed.

• Training needs analysis and/or risk-based training needs analysis conducted to understand key competencies that need to be maintained, assessed and refreshed.

• Having established systems and procedures to clearly record and define competency requirements for each rail safety worker, including refresher training and assessment requirements. These systems and procedures should also allow the capture of new competency or modified competency requirements associated with changes to the work.

• Supporting systems and culture to maintain competency. Examples include: workers being able to access information easily, the supply of usable procedures that reflect how work is done, having managers and teammates that support competency development, mentorship opportunities, and systems that easily and accurately capture records of competence.

Expected action

Operators are encouraged to review their SMS competency management requirements for employees and contractors to confirm that they remain appropriate for the scale and risk of their operations. Operators are reminded of their requirement to ensure the applicability of the AQF to its operations, so far as is reasonably practical. In all instances of AQF-aligned and / or in-house enterprise assessment, the principles and rules of competency-based assessment are to be adhered to.