Business profile
Railsafetysolutions R
ail Safety Solutions (RSS) provides on-track safety solutions delivering a high quality and professional service for a variety of automatic track warning systems (ATWS), lookout operated warning systems (LOWS), safety critical and contingent labour, safety barrier fencing and safety planning for the UK rail industry. Clients include Network Rail, AmeyColas, Babcock and Balfour Beatty, through to subcontractors and survey teams. Many of our clients have complex safety requirements, high volume demands, 24-hour multi-site operations, varying shift patterns and many different skill requirements, all of which are managed through dedicated teams. RSS was the first acquisition by the Auctus Management Group (AMG) in May 2012. Birmingham-based AMG is backed by Finance Birmingham, the funding arm of Birmingham City Council, which was founded earlier this year by a former management team from Carillion subsidiary SkyBlue. SkyBlue supplies safety critical and rail gangs for track renewals and rail projects. It also supplies temporary, contract and permanent staff for the civils and utilities sectors. With a strategy to develop a one-stop shop service for clients, the group is dedicated to building and developing further skilled workers and has already created apprenticeships for 35 local individuals who are being mentored through a career path to become multi skilled rail operatives and senior technicians on the ATWS and LOWS systems. The opportunities and career paths being created have led to a regular weekly increase in both skilled workers joining the pool of labour and work banks from clients looking to have a competent flexible workforce and managed apprenticeship service.
Network Rail cable train LOWS is a tried, trusted and simply deployed method that issues an advanced warning of approaching trains towards your worksite while working in red zone conditions. The Network Rail cable train has already been protected by RSS using the
The use of track warning systems sits higher on the safety hierarchy than the use of traditional lookouts with flag and whistles. But when did you last plan or work on a site where this was utilised to improve safety?
Schweizer Electronic, Minimel 95 range of LOWS in the Wessex area, where the LOWS lookouts were positioned to issue a warning of approaching trains using a handset with an audible and visual warning made across the length of the cable train by means of EWK warning units placed in the cess.
This system was deployed similarly to that of conventional lookouts but was constantly reconfigured as the train moved along its working demarcations by
RSS’s LOWS controller.
It is under consideration by Network Rail that the warning units could be fixed to pre-identified ‘hotspots’ throughout the train itself to minimise any disruption to the production time but to increase the safety of the LOWS operational team that is led by RSS’s (LOWS Controller). Placed higher up the SSOW planning hierarchy the ACJV protect the workforce on the HOBC and TRS trains as a safer option than utilising unassisted lookout
DECEMBER 2012 PAGE 53
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