American Public Transportation Association Annual Rail Conference: Dallas, Texas | Monday June 4, 2012 10:30 am
SAFETY & SECURITY: a 90 minute session focused on tools and tracking methods for ongoing safety improvement for the entire transit operation.
Moderator
David O. Nelson: Jacobs Engineering and Conservatoire National Des Arts et Métier
The key to setting targets for safety lies in your capability to monitor and analyze hazards that exist in your operating and workplace environments as well as trends for accidents and “near-misses”. Considering all phases from design to revenue operations, how effective are we in truly analyzing and mitigating hazards and developing internal processes that lead to reductions in accidents? If you are committed to improving safety and are searching for answers, the panelists in this session represent a variety of perspectives, and will share practices, tools and techniques that you can adapt at your agency.
Presentations
Transit System Hazard Analysis – A Post Mortem: Mr. David Allen Anderson, CH2M HILL
Transit systems require a safety case to operate; this is true for both greenfield and brownfield systems. These safety cases should be based upon, or supported by, a properly executed hazard analysis. Hazard analysis, however, is not a single activity but a series of analyses each of which fulfill a specific role in the overall safety process. These analyses need to address design, operations and occupational health and safety issues. Common problems with hazard analyses relate to unclear hazard definition, poor integration, incomplete mitigations/controls and a lack of associated verifications. This is further complicated by the frequent misapplication of the various types of analyses and unclear expectations as to what information the hazard analysis should contain. As a minimum, the hazard analyses should identify the hazard, its cause, its effect, recommended controls, verification of controls and an estimate of its associated risk. Properly performed, the analyses provide not only an understanding of the hazards associated with the system’s design and operation, but they also identify the controls necessary to ensure safety is maintained. This paper presents a post mortem of recent hazard analyses for a North American transit system and provides examples of common issues that should be avoided. A simple framework for conducting a hazard analysis shall be provided and explanation of the process in a transit setting shall be presented.
Life Safety and Light Rail: Luke Chisenhall, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART)
An overview of DART commitment for high quality, cost effective, and safe Light Rail Transit (LRT) service and its success for hazard identification and mitigation during design, construction, testing, pre-revenue and revenue phase. This presentation will also provide examples of coordination with the various member cities Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) and-well-as compliance with various codes and standards (examples: NFPA 101 & 130, Fire Codes, Building Codes, DART Design Criteria, etc.)
The Safety Case as a Living Document to Manage the System Safety Program: Sue Cox , Delcan Corp
Hazards may be introduced to a program in various ways; most people immediately associate hazards with hardware failures, software faults or human interactions. Hazards may also be introduced systematically through failures or omissions of the system safety program itself. When executing a system safety program, it is important to address the safety management, the quality management, and the functional and technical safety aspects in full measure. This broad perspective is encouraged in Europe as embodied in the CENELEC standard for railway applications, EN 50129, which documents the evidence for all three aspects into a safety case for safety acceptance and approval.
Experience has taught two important lessons; that the safety case does not have to be voluminous, nor should it be deferred until the end of a project. The safety case can be drafted at the beginning of a project and used as a living document to manage the system safety program. The living safety case records progress, deviations and issues in a concise format that facilitates the identification of project risks which supports project management and helps achieve schedule milestones and manage budget. Based on the author’s CENELEC experience, this paper/presentation will expound upon the application of a living safety case to manage a system safety program based on MIL-STD-882 to address hazards that may be introduced systematically, by technological fault or failure, or by human interactions.
