Major Risks in Railway Operation Management
Question:
Discuss about the Occupational Health and Safety Management.
Risk assessment is a major concern of railway operating company in order to ensure safety. Occurrence of risk is very common in railway operation process (Reason 2016). One of the major risks is occupational safety. However, railway transport is considered as the economic, environmentally friendly and safe mood of transport. From last few years, rapid technological changes take place in Australian railway industry. However, many organizations take a lease of the railway passenger operation. Due to this emerging technology the instability occurs, which results in accidental risk in railway operation. This study deals with the railway passenger operation and risk management in the context of Great Rail Australia.
Great Rail Australia is new railway operating organization. This organization is going to start their business across Australia and their headquarters is situated at Sydney. This company is involved in setting up the interstate rail passengers operation in Australia. The operation of this company includes maintenance of second-hand locomotives, passenger’s carriages, facility management, maintenance of infrastructure, equipment and access the information. This company also involved in handling passengers and the scheduled of trains. As argued by Grote (2015), accidental risk, safety risk and high cost of operation are the major risks that are associated with railway operation. Great Rail Australia needs to develop a risk management plan to reduce the risk from the workplace. This will ensure the safety of the passengers as well as the stakeholders. In the recent years, fatal accidents in railway have been increasing rapidly. On the other hand, occupational safety risk is another vital risk that organization may face during their operation. Apart from this regulatory compliance risk takes place if an organization is not able to comply with the legal requirements during their operation.
Major risks of rail operation are rail safety, regulatory compliance risk and occupational health and safety issues (OHS). These three major risks take place during the rail operation. In the context of Great Rail Australia occupational, they need to identify the possible risks that may take place during their operation. Development of a risk management plan will be helpful for Great Rail Australia to ensure safety in their operation management.
Rail safety issue is a big consequence of railway operation management. In Australia major rail accidents are taken place for which it is important for the rail operating organization to ensure the safety of rail operation. According to the statistical data in the year 2004, eight people were killed due to derailment of a train in South Sydney. In the year 2006 41 people were injured when train and truck collide. Therefore, in 2007, 11 people were killed due to crash in line passenger train in Victoria (Smh.com.au 2018). From the above statistics, it can be said that rail safety is a big issue in the recent years due to the increased rate of accidents. However, due to adoption of technology often the employees are not able to manage the information as result, risk occurs. Negligence of railway staffs is one of the vital factors of rail safety issue. On another hand, poor designing is another factor that hampers the rail safety. Due to the negligence of the staffs often passengers are not aware of the risk as a result, accidents occur. Derailment or manufacturing issue is another major reason of risk in rail operation (Liu et al. 2015). Often installation defect leads the passengers as well as the railway staffs to face accident in railway operation management. In the context of Great Rail Australia, they are associated with maintenance of equipment thus; issues due to derailment can take place during their operation. Hence, it is essential for this organization to ensure the safety regarding all equipment that is used in railway operation management.
Risk Management System for Great Rail Australia
Legal issues or regulatory risk may appear during the rail operation if the organization does not follow the legal requirements (Monios and Bergqvist 2015). However, Australian government has proposed Rail Safety National Law that in order to implement major changes in rail operation (Onrsr.com.au 2018). Incompliance with this law may lead Great Rail Australia to face a legal issue, which is a big risk for this organization. Therefore, if the organization does not comply with Rail Safety Act 2006 then it will be difficult for them to enhance their operation process across Australia. On the other hand, changes in the regulatory law are a big issue that may affect the current business operation of Great Rail Australia. However, in the recent years, Rail Safety National Law and Rail Safety Act are two major regulatory framework of Australia that facilitates the railway operation in this country. Any changes in these regulatory bodies may lead Great Rail Australia to face regulatory compliance risk. As a result, their operation process will be hampered and the growth of this organization will be affected.
Illness and injury are very common in railway operation management. However, The Great Rail Australia is going to manage the railway passengers and the maintenance of equipment to complete the railway operation. Hence, the duty staffs are always at health risk. Major accidents, as well as injury, may take place while using the equipment. During the manufacturing of rail parts, the workers get an injury and sometimes death occurs (Gul et al. 2017). Great Rail Australia is associated with handling the passengers, office maintenance and infrastructure improvement of Australian railway. Hence, an accident with the workers is very common in the workplace. This highlights the safety risk of the duty staffs. OHS risk is a common thing for railway operation management. This often harms the workers during their work. Injury and sudden death of the workers are the major health risks of the workers who are involved in manufacturing the rail parts, handling equipment and involved in infrastructure designing (Reese 2015). The Great Rail Australia can face such occupational health and safety issues in their workplace if they do not develop a proper risk management system in their business operation.
From the above discussion, it has been identified that there are three types of risks are associated with Great Rail Australia such as risk related to legal compliance, OHS risk, and rail safety risk. In order to deal with such risk, a risk management system is proposed. The features of the risk management process are as follow:
Identification of the hazards: PHA Tool
Identification of the hazards is the heart of risk management system. Preliminary hazard analysis or PHA tool is an effective tool to identify the current risks of a system (Kim et al. 2015). However, for Great Rail Australia use of PHA tool will be helpful to address the current risks in their system. Preliminary hazard analysis tool is a semi-quantitative method that helps the railway operating company to assess all potential hazards in their system. Hazard identification is one of the major features of risk management system. This PHA tool is effective to get an initial overview of the present risk in the business. In the context Great Rail Australia, they can identify that health and safety risk, railway safety risk and regulatory compliance risks are present in their operation process. Such identification can be done by using PHA tool. PHA tool is beneficial for an organization to carry out rapid risk ranking and to identify the potential hazards (Glendon et al. 2016). Risk identification is crucial for The Great Rail Australia to implement an effective risk management system. It will be difficult for this organization to take action plan without identifying the risks in their railway operation management. On the other hand, by using HAZOP tool or Hazard and operability tool this organization will be able to identify the chemical process system. This will be effective to identify the safety hazards in a workplace.
Evaluation of the risk is another vital feature of risk management system. In this stage, an organization is able to classify the existing risks. Therefore, the decision is taking based on the tolerability of the risk (McNeil et al. 2015). Risk evaluation will enable the Great Rail Australia to categorize their identified risk. From the above analysis, it has been found that three major types of risk may take place during the operation of this organization. After the classification of the risk, necessary actions will be taken to mitigate such risk. From the risk evaluation, an organization is able to understand which risk is tolerable, intolerable and negligible. In the context of Great Rail Australia, OHS risk is an intolerable and regulatory risk is tolerable. Hence, by using risk evaluation it the identified risks are classified and based on this classification action plan will be taken.
Risk analysis is another process of risk management system. Through this process estimation of the frequency of accidents can be calculated (Bromiley et al. 2015). Great Rail Australia will be able to calculate the frequency of the workplace injury in their risk management system. By using cause-consequence analysis tool this organization will be able to identify the reasons for current risk in their organization. Risk analysis also helps this organization to measure the severity of the risks that may occur during their railway operation management. However, Great Rail Australia needs to build a risk analysis team to measure the impact of current risk factors.
Evaluation of the risk
Risk control is the final step of risk management system that reduces the potential risks from a system. In order to reduce the occupational health and safety risk, Great Rail Australia need to follow Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Implementation of this Act will help an organization to maintain the safety in the workplace (Legislation.gov.au 2018). By following this Act Great Rail Australia can reduce the regulatory risks from their business operation as maintenance of this Act ensures the legal compliance with the Safety Act. On the other hand, providing a proper training program to the on-duty rail staffs Great Rail Australia will be able to increase awareness regarding the workplace health and safety. Therefore, all the equipment and infrastructure should be checked on a regular basis and proper monitoring process should be implemented to measure the effectiveness of current risk management system.
Conclusion
The entire study focuses on the risk management plan in the context of Great Rail Australia. From the above analysis, it has been received that regulatory compliance issue, occupational health, and safety issue and railway safety issue are the major types of risks that usually take place in rail operation management. In order to deal with these challenges, Great Rail Australia needs to develop a rigid risk management system that includes risk identification, risk evaluation, risk analysis, and control. Hence, it can be concluded that by following the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 will be beneficial for Great Rail Australia to reduce the occupational safety issue and the regulatory compliance risk from their operation.
References
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McNeil, A.J., Frey, R. and Embrechts, P., 2015. Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press.
Monios, J. and Bergqvist, R., 2015. Intermodal terminal concessions: lessons from the port sector. Research in Transportation Business & Management, 14, pp.90-96.
Onrsr.com.au. 2018. Rail Safety National Law. [online] Available at: https://www.onrsr.com.au/about-onrsr/legislation [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
Reason, J., 2016. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge.
Reese, C.D., 2015. Occupational health and safety management: a practical approach. CRC press.
Smh.com.au. 2018. Major rail accidents in Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/news/national/major-rail-accidents-in-australia/2007/06/05/1180809514121.html [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
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