Knowledge transfer Knowledge is power
The role of non-technical skills in safety critical roles across the UK rail industry is about to be put under the spotlight thanks to the new Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University of Nottingham and Arcadia Alive
T
he KTP will test the human and financial effectiveness of incorporating non- technical skills (NTS) into the competence management systems (CMS) of safety critical roles in the rail industry – both in the UK and internationally. It comes at a prescient time for the industry, with international news recently dominated by serious rail incidents: 79 lives were lost in the Northern Spain rail crash last July and four lives in New York in December. Both have been linked to driver shortcomings in the crucial non-technical skill of situational awareness, in terms of interrupted concentration and driver distraction. So what exactly are non-technical
skills? The RSSB provides a summary: NTS are the cognitive, social and personal resource skills that complement technical skills and contribute to safe and efficient task performance by helping people to anticipate, identify and mitigate against errors. Individually they can be broken
down into seven key categories and 26 skills. The categories are: situational awareness (covering all aspects of concentration); conscientiousness (including a positive attitude towards rules and procedures); communication; decision making and action; cooperation and working with others; workload management; and self-management (including motivation and initiative). NTS training is proven to bring substantial and sustained benefits: Canadian Pacific Railway reported a 46 per cent decrease in human-caused incidents following the implementation of its NTS Programme in 2002; in military aviation, reports suggest that NTS programmes have achieved an 81 per cent reduction in the occurrence of incidents; and Arcadia Alive’s own experience with a major UK Toc is that its Driver Support Programme – an intensive four-day NTS programme – has produced a 93 per cent decrease in driver incidents up to three years after the training.
Not incorporated in UK rail In stark contrast to technical skills training, NTS are not routinely incorporated into the UK rail industry CMS. This means there is no single standardised industry approach to ensuring employees in safety critical roles are fully trained and kept up to date with the latest developments in NTS, or that their NTS training meets the specific demands presented by their individual role and career stage. Instead, each organisation is responsible for defining and implementing its own NTS training, and making its own decisions about who it gives this training to. Sometimes it can be reactive rather than proactive and is not tailored to the individual needs of the person or role. This inevitably results in significant differences in the training received by those in safety critical roles – as well as inevitable gaps which could ultimately compromise employee and passenger safety. The KTP seeks to address these inconsistencies. It will provide the
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