RISSB sets healthy pace for railway standards despite criticism

By Jennifer Perry

“It’s not a fair criticism,” the RISSB’s general manager Kevin Taylor told Rail Express.
“Clearly people haven’t looked at what the RISSB has produced and is currently producing - especially considering each standard takes approximately two and a half years to develop.”
The volume of work that the RISSB has already completed with a small team of four project managers plus Taylor is indeed no small achievement.
Since its inception it has published the Work On Track rulebook, 16 rolling stock standards (as well as converting 16 previous rail standards into Australian standards), a Human Performance Guideline, a security handbook, revised the DIRN Volume 4 Code of Practice and introduced the UK’s safety culture toolkit.
It presently has another 40 rolling stock standards, seven infrastructure standards, one communications standard, four codes of practice, two guidelines and the Train Operations suite of rules and procedures under development.
“Yet there are some in industry and Government who expect more,” Taylor said, adding that the criticism suggested he has not done enough in advertising the RISSB’s achievements and the RISSB could be a victim of its own success.
“The RISSB people have been the quiet achievers rather than being proactive in selling our message but this is about to turn around.
“Also, people now want more, given that they are more familiar with the RISSB product.”
While everything produced by the RISSB is a milestone for the Australian rail industry, the most significant project to date has been the development of the 43 Work On Track suite of rules and procedures as part of the Australian National Rules and Procedures (ANRP) project, approved on March 2nd.
“This project has had a long gestation period (12 years) and previous attempts have failed for a variety of reasons,” Taylor said.
“Regardless, the Work On Track rulebook was produced in 18 months thanks to the energy and efforts of those involved.”
For the first time in Australia’s rail history, the rulebook (and the Train Operations rulebook when completed), provide a common set of rules and procedures around the country, drawn down by access providers who will marry these with their network specific rules and procedures to form network handbooks.
Taylor said that this is necessary because of the differing technologies around the country, though as technologies become more compatible between organisations in the future the RISSB suite will increase and the network specific rules and procedures will decrease.
The RISSB will produce an additional 136 standards over the next five to seven years, making it the second largest Safety Development Organisation in Australia.


Please visit the RISSB website: www.rissb.com.au