Cross border railway operations: improving safety at cultural interfaces

Organizations with different cultures will be increasingly required to interface with each other as legislation is introduced to ensure the interoperability of railway systems across Europe. To approach the safety challenges related to interfaces between cultures, the International Union of Railways (UIC) initiated the project Safety Culture at Interfaces. The project covers the development of a method for assessing and trying to improve safety cultural interfaces. The project was performed by SINTEF. This paper presents the method, which is called SafeTrack. The project has piloted the method in three railway organisations with positive evaluations from the participants, identifying several issues that could improve safety at interfaces. It is not possible to isolate safety culture at interfaces from the whole system such as environment, infrastructure, organization, individual and teamwork. Safety culture at interfaces is an integrated part of the "whole picture". Building...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: CTW
• Authors: S. O. Johnsen, J. Vatn, R. Rosness, I. A. Herrera
• Keywords: CTW 2006, Project, Safety, Safety Culture