Ensuring reliable rail services: How RSSB makes a difference

In this episode, we're joined by Chris Knowles, RSSB's Director of System Safety and Health.

We’ll explore some specific challenges to rail reliability and resilience, why it’s vital to address them, and some of the solutions that RSSB is offering in this space.

Find out more at: https://www.rssb.co.uk/our-business-plan

Transcript

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Host [00.17]: Ensuring reliability and resilience for our rail system is essential for good customer service.

Delays and disruptions erode passenger confidence, which in turn discourages rail travel and affects the economy through lost productivity. In addition, unreliable infrastructure increases risks, which may lead to accidents.

Investing in reliability and resilience not only minimises those risks, but it also ensures the long-term sustainability and efficiency of this vital public service, supporting economic growth and social connectivity across the nation.

So, with us today is Chris Knowles, our Director of System Safety and Health. In this episode, we’ll explore some specific challenges to rail reliability and resilience, why it’s vital to address them, and some of the solutions that RSSB is offering in this space.

Let’s start this conversation by thinking about some of the challenges regarding the reliability and resilience of the rail system. Could you kick off by explaining what those specific challenges are in 2025, and also why it’s important to address these?

Chris Knowles [01.24]: Well, thanks, Jasmin. This is a big topic. If we want passengers and freight operators to use the railway, it has to give a reliable, safe service. 

We have more extreme weather events now than in previous years. Extreme rainfall, high winds, long periods of hot, dry weather, and flooding. All of these present us with challenges. Now, clearly we can’t control the weather, but we can adapt our asset management and operational approaches to continue to deliver safe railway service.

And we know there is a finite amount of money available for the railway. That’s true for all businesses. So, we need to ensure we deliver a safe, high-performing railway, which is affordable.

Assets need to perform to deliver service. So, we need to target interventions related to those assets, be it in the design and build phase or in maintenance, for example, to ensure that reliability and resilience are absolutely embedded in our service delivery.

But let’s not forget the people working in our railway system. A reliable and resilient railway needs a healthy workforce. Our sickness absence rate in the industry overall is twice the national average. That impacts not only on the health of those concerned, but also on rail performance and the cost base.

Host [02.55]: Absolutely key to tackle those head on, then. Thank you for that, Chris. I think digital transformation will be vital as well. What do you think embracing new digital technologies can do for us in this space?

Chris [03.06]: The opportunities available through the application of digital technology are enormous. We’re increasingly capturing data directly from members’ systems through the use of APIs, direct connections to those systems. It avoids double handling of data, making it quicker and more accurate to feed the industry knowledge base.

But it’s more than that. Being able to encapsulate the knowledge and tooling to support decisions in digital form will unlock trapped value. 

As an example, our wheelset intervention support tool helps freight operators manage wheelset issues before they cause disruptions or lead to safety issues. This tool leverages predictive analytics to monitor wheel set degradation using data from wheel impact load detectors, coupled with other sources of data from the users of the wagons. This has the potential to improve performance, improve safety and reduce costs as it is rolled out more widely.

And artificial intelligence brings great opportunity. Consideration of how this is used is key, particularly if applied in safety-related or safety-critical areas.

The assurance approach will need to be adapted to both embrace the opportunity, but make sure we have suitable rigour in ensuring safety as we adopt artificial intelligence and the opportunities it brings.

Host [04.41]: That's great. Thanks, Chris. And I think what I’d like to talk about next is some of the commitments outlined in our Annual Business Plan. 

So first, I think I’d like to revisit some of what we set out in the last financial year. Some of those [projects] are ongoing, given their scale, of course. And a big one is the continued development of the National CCS DRACAS. So, could you tell us a little bit about this and how we’re currently tracking against our goal to get this into place?

Chris [05.06]: There’s been a lot of work over many years, resulting in a change to standards 2 years ago and the delivery of a roadmap to achieve a National CCS DRACAS. Now, it is much easier to say ‘DRACAS’ than ‘Defect Recording Analysis and Corrective Action System’, so I will stick with calling it a ‘DRACAS’.

The roadmap created last year had strong stakeholder buy-in. It gives a credible route to the National DRACAS, which has the potential to unlock £231m worth of potential benefits. This saw the agreement also last year and publication of a significant step forward: the Data Sharing Charter.

We touched earlier a little bit around the importance of sharing information. And this Data Sharing Charter will continue to evolve, but it gives the basis for all parties to share the data necessary to improve system performance, reduce costs, and to enhance safety.

Host [06.12]: Thanks, Chris. It certainly sounds as though that’ll be huge for overall system reliability. And what about our risk modelling efforts, especially in relation to extreme weather? Can you tell us how we’re doing there?

Chris [06.24]: Well, one good example centres around extreme rainfall. Extreme rainfall can lead to earthwork failures, whether those earthworks are soil cuttings or embankments. And it has been the normal practice to introduce blanket speed restrictions in times of extreme weather.

We’re piloting a decision support tool with Network Rail called PRIMA. PRIMA is a decision support tool for rail operators drawing up speed plans for routes, section by section. It gives them a view of whole-system risk for each section. PRIMA weighs the immediate risk of an accident with the knock-on risks to the wider network caused by imposing a speed restriction, and it then suggests running speeds for each section of track.

Now, Network Rail can combine this information with their local knowledge to produce speed plans for operating route sections. And the result is a speed restriction profile that are proportionate to the risk that bad weather causes, that direct risk of derailment from spoil ending up on the track, yet also delivers a safe, higher-performing railway in times of bad weather.

It’s essentially looking at the whole-system risk from the direct derailment risk that’s posed by those earthwork failures and the knock-on risk around the network from the increased delays and perturbations in service, the overcrowding at stations that can result to arrive at that suggested optimum speed.

Host [08.05]: Fantastic, Chris. Thanks for going over that in such detail. And with the recent publication, then, of our 2025–26 Annual Business Plan, there’s so much more in development, isn’t there?

For example, I’m wondering if you can go over the work that we’re doing to better understand and mitigate operational incidents, such as SPADs, such as overspeeding, which of course can lead to system disruption. Can you go into that a little bit?

Chris [08.30]: Well, touching on the overspeed aspect initially, one of our focus areas this year is to better understand overspeeding. We have seen examples of overspeeding, such as the events at Spital Junction, and we need to understand the risk from such events.

So, we have a project in progress to identify overspeed data sources and parameters to strengthen future investigations and to enable targeted action to reduce the risk and improve the resilience.

But our work is going beyond that. That aspect of the data collection for overspeed is part of a wider suite of works, such as considering Train Protection Strategy, for example, which all factors into this area.

And as we’re making decisions about where we should be spending our funds to make sure the railways are a safer, more resilient, and high-performing space, cost-benefit analysis becomes really important. And we’re updating our Cost-Benefit Analysis guidance and tool. The update will build on relevant findings from ORR’s review of the costs and benefits of safety interventions. And this will help our members take safety investment decisions that provide value for money and deliver a safe railway amidst rising costs and at the same time demonstrate legal compliance.

Chris [10.01]: Wow, plenty going on and all very positive, thank you. And is there anything else at all that you’d like to highlight in this space?

Host [10.08]: Well, one thing I should highlight, I think, is collaboration. Collaboration is so important to all of the work that we do because a lot of the focus for us is at the interfaces in the industry. 

So, we bring people together through our various risk groups, through our various technical committees, to look at these challenges that we have at the interfaces between different parts of the railway, be those physical or organisational. So that collaboration is really key.

The people who get involved in those groups, they bring a lot of knowledge from the various sectors, their personal and professional background. That really contributes to the development of tools and applications that are directly relevant and bring value to our members.

But it’s a two-way thing. The people who come and contribute also take a great deal from it in terms of the discussion and the knowledge that they gain as part of that exercise. I’ve had that experience myself, both working within the groups at RSSB and seeing that contribution that comes in, and when we contribute into other groups, such as international standards committees, which again is a collaborative experience.

So, if I was going to highlight one other thing, it’s that real spirit of collaboration, different members of the railway coming together, and indeed reaching outside the industry to bring lessons and learning into those groups.

Host [11.43]: Fantastic. And I’m wondering at this point if you have any positive stories to share from our members. How are they benefiting from our work in this space?

Chris [11.52]: Well, if I could highlight one health example of some recent work. Standards require safety-critical workers to have ‘normal’ colour vision, and the industry has for years applied the Ishihara test, which tests interpretation of colour plates and only produces a pass or fail outcome.

Now, Ishihara is quite a blunt instrument, and there was concern that many drivers had been driving safely for years, then suddenly failed an Ishihara test. We’ve worked with City University to standardise the use of the Ishihara test to ensure consistency in its application across the industry. 

But importantly, the work also defined how the industry could use a supplementary test called the Colour Assessment and Diagnosis Test, or CAD test for short. Now, a number of TOCs have taken up the CAD as a secondary test and found that many of those who had failed the Ishihara can pass the CAD test thresholds. And bear in mind, these thresholds have been specifically developed and tailored for the rail industry. So, it’s a very applicable test.

One train operator has already fed back that they were pleased to return five drivers back to duty straight away by applying this secondary test. Now, that’s great for the train operator, but frankly, it’s great for the drivers as well.

Host [13.22]: Amazing, thank you Chris. And finally, then, what other future challenges to reliability and resilience do you think we can expect? And also, how can industry really start to prepare for those now?

Chris [13.34]: Well, I think it’s all too relevant and visible in people’s minds at the moment, the issues around cybersecurity. The importance of cyber resilience is all too well demonstrated with recent events we’ve seen in the news, not just in the UK, but internationally.

Resilience in this area is essential in the operational systems on which the railway depends, not just the back-office IT systems. This is a particular focus for us across many areas of RSSB.

And I have to talk about the asset base. I often say that people don’t notice the assets when they are working as expected. We notice them when they fail. As they age or the environment in which they operate changes, the risks of them becoming all too visible can increase.

We have to make sure we understand degradation. Explore new techniques for inspection and monitoring, and then optimise not just the way in which assets are maintained or changed, but when and at what cost.

And perhaps the third area I would highlight is the aspect of skills for the future. We need to focus on what we’re going to need in the future and build that capability. A workforce able to develop, apply, and reap the rewards from digitisation to really get under the bonnet and understand the benefits that come from understanding what the data is telling us, to actually adapt our ways of working, our techniques, as I touched on in the asset base. 

How will we understand what’s happening to the assets and predict forward how they will perform? How will we see those threats from cybersecurity? How will we prepare for the railway of tomorrow? And that will mean new skills, it will mean us adapting, it will mean us deploying new techniques and competence and capability in all areas across the industry.

Host [15.40]: Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.

Chris [15.43]: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Host [15.45]: And thank you for listening.

If you want to learn more about how RSSB is supporting industry in improving system reliability and resilience, please visit our website.

We look forward to you joining us for the next episode, and in the meantime, safe travels.