As part of the European Commission’s Twinning II project regarding safety management, ERA came onto the UIC premises to deliver a three-day training session to the consortium members, in order to prepare for peer reviews, which will take place in Austria (OEBB), Belgium (INFRABEL) and Luxembourg (CFL CARGO) in the near future. The first day was dedicated to training the “peer reviewers”, and particularly to providing knowledge and skills on structuring a positive safety culture around the ERA safety culture model. Bart Accou, from ERA, gave an in-depth presentation on the European Railway Safety Culture Model (ERA SCM) and highlighted the main features of this model, split between “enablers” and “fundamentals”. These features are:
- Interacting: Teamwork and collaboration, interpersonal values, regulatory relationships
- Formalising: roles and responsibilities, organisational design, and organisational systems
- Disseminating: communication, competence management, soft skills.
- Reinforcing: leading by example, management intervention, HOF (Human Organisational Factors) expertise.
- Controlling major risks
- Understanding the workplace reality
- Learning from experience
- Integrating safety consistently
This ERA model helps clarify how safety culture works and how it can be used. During that day, participants did exercises on the ERA SCM, data collection, and worked with the data to produce a report. The second day was devoted to safety leadership training. The main objective of the course was to raise awareness on how important safety leadership is among managers. It emphasises putting safety at the forefront of daily actions, in every decision made. The third day was dedicated to the “team leaders”, to training them on the methodological, logistical, and organisational aspects to be used to prepare the peer visits, to planning the review week and the roles on-site. The course also covered defining tasks and responsibilities, the organisation of data collection days, and some recommendations for producing the final report.
For further information, please contact Frédéric Hénon, Head of Operations and Safety at henon@uic.org or Virginie Papillault, Human & Organisational Factors and Safety Culture Manager at: papillault@uic.org