Human and Organisational Factors
Human and Organisational Factors Working Group (HOFWG)
Chair: Nora Balfe, Irish Rail
Vice-chair: Margot Van Vliet, Prorail
UIC Coordinator: Virginie Papillault
Meetings: 3 to 4 times a year.
HOF Working Group objectives
- supporting UIC members in integrating Human and Organisational Factors in their safety systems as appropriate tools for enhancing safety, reliability and efficiency;
- implementing a HOF digital platform to connect the railway community of Human & Organisational Factors. This community-based platform will facilitate the exchange of practices and experiences related to HOF;
- exchanging information/best practices on innovations and introduction of new technologies in railways to drive the change linked to automation;
- conducting human organisational analyses of safety events through feedback from experience;
- delivering useful recommendations/guidelines for UIC members and presenting them in widely-targeted publications;
- supporting members in implementing “operational” Safety Culture as a key enabler of effective safety management;
- developing a network of rail HOF experts in the railways and beyond.
Special Task Forces may be created on an ad hoc basis if requested on a specific subject.
Members
UIC Contact
UIC Coordinator: Virginie Papillault
Safety guidance
In 2012, the UIC Safety Platform held three one-day conferences on the theme of safety culture. These conferences brought together railway operators and representatives of other industries (energy, healthcare, chemicals, aviation) and gave rise to two major questions:
- What are the links and interactions between safety management and safety culture?
- How can we measure safety culture?
These two questions were explored at greater length by the UIC Human Factors Working Group and a dedicated “Safety Culture” task force.
This report presents the conclusions of their work.
Whereas the concept of safety management is nowadays fairly well defined in a number of legal texts, the same cannot be said of the concept of safety culture.
However, if a company wishes to improve and measure its safety culture, it needs to define its goals and have at its disposal a set of relevant metrics against which to measure its performance.