"Distracted" Network Rail staff working from home caused rail near-miss

[whole diary]

[TaplowGreen]

......almost unbelieveable, what on Earth were these people doing "working from home" in what sounds like a totally inappropriate environment, and lacking basic communication skills - thank God the outcome wasn't much worse!

Article from Monday's Telegraph - I've copied/pasted it in [part] as it's behind the Telegraph's paywall

Train came within 75 seconds of crashing into maintenance vehicle after communication breakdown

A train came within 75 seconds of potentially crashing, an investigation has found as it said staff working from home caused a breakdown in communication.
A near-miss at Balham station, south-west London, occurred due to poor communication by Network Rail workers, the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch)) said.
Shortly after 7pm on April 20 last year, a tamping machine was mistakenly driven onto a line which had not been closed to trains during maintenance work.
It crossed a junction through which a Southern train from London Victoria to East Grinstead had passed just 75 seconds earlier.

The investigation found that the mistake happened because the two people responsible for train movements over the weekend of the near-miss spent a "significant proportion" of their time working from home.

[etc]

Having been alerted to the juicy bit, a link, a snippet from the Telegraph and a link to their source - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5e344e43ed915d0956ae522d/R012020_200203_Balham.pdf

93. Over the weekend on which this incident occurred, both PICOPs^▸ (Person In Charge Of Possession (for railway engineering work)) spent a significant proportion of the time working from their homes. The PICOP competence standards do not provide any clear guidance on where a PICOP should be located during a possession. The rail industry has created PICOP offices in several places to provide suitable facilities for managing possessions. Witness evidence indicates that Network Rail’s expectation was that all PICOPs for possessions on the Sussex route would work from the office in Cover House where the environment was quiet, paperwork could be viewed and whiteboards could be used to assist the PICOP’s understanding and situational awareness of the activities and train movements taking place within the possession, but no formal instructions to this effect had been issued. However, Vital staff had been told by Network Rail that they were not allowed to work at Cover House if no Network Rail staff were present, because of concerns about office security, and there is conflicting evidence about whether this was a factor in the day PICOP’s decision to work at home on 20 April 2019. Witness evidence indicates that Vital managers had told the company’s PICOPs that they could work in any location if it was free from distraction and enabled the PICOP to concentrate, although Vital has stated that this was not the company’s official view. RAIB understands that the practice of PICOPs working from home was not uncommon.

94 Unless a PICOP has access to a properly equipped office at home, the working environment there is unlikely to provide them with the necessary facilities to effectively manage multiple train movements within a possession. If away from the office, a PICOP does not currently have access to information management systems that would allow documents to be retrieved (to prevent paper documents being lost or misplaced), or facilities to observe where the trains are located. The use of appropriate facilities and access to technology is important in allowing
the PICOP to manage train movements in, out and within a possession. In the incident described in this report, suitable office facilities might have prevented the day PICOP from losing the train running documentation, and allowed both PICOPs to observe the position of the tamper and identify the discrepancies in the information being provided.

95 Analysis of the voice recordings shows that the PICOPs’ working environment may have been inappropriate. Background noise from their home environments and while driving was apparent (see paragraph 121), and this may have resulted in distraction and may have inhibited the quality and content of the PICOPs’ safety critical communications.

Love the bits about switching SIM cards to another phone and using mobile phones while driving too!

Edit by Grahame - reducing paywall quotes and increasing original source material

[SandTEngineer]

You can read the full RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) Report here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5e344e43ed915d0956ae522d/R012020_200203_Balham.pdf

[JontyMort]

You can read the full RAIB^▸ (Rail Accident Investigation Branch) Report here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5e344e43ed915d0956ae522d/R012020_200203_Balham.pdf

Gordon Bennett! I had always naively believed that a PICOP^▸ (Person In Charge Of Possession (for railway engineering work)) actually had to be in possession, i.e. on site. They might just as well have been abroad.

The communication was in the Abermule class.

[MVR S&T]

Im sorry, but is this real, it is a real chore to get to work from home in most service industries, such as accounting and engineering, this is like a door staff, in a club working from home via a phone to the bar staff!

[stuving]

Im sorry, but is this real, it is a real chore to get to work from home in most service industries, such as accounting and engineering, this is like a door staff, in a club working from home via a phone to the bar staff!

I think you (and others) have missed the point by a substantial margin.  The PICOP^▸ (Person In Charge Of Possession (for railway engineering work))'s role is not to supervise work being done in the possession - there are others on-site who do that. It's about coordinating train movements and changes to the possession boundaries, talking by phone to those other supervisors and train drivers who are spread out across the possession, signallers, etc. It also means being able to check all the paperwork that says what's been approved and is expected by the rest of the railway. It's seen officially as best done in an office - trying to do it out on site would be as unacceptable as doing it in a car driving home.

That much is clear from reading the report, or even just this bit which was posted earlier:

94   Unless a PICOP has access to a properly equipped office at home, the working environment there is unlikely to provide them with the necessary facilities to effectively manage multiple train movements within a possession. If away from the office, a PICOP does not currently have access to information management systems that would allow documents to be retrieved (to prevent paper documents being lost or misplaced), or facilities to observe where the trains are located. The use of appropriate facilities and access to technology is important in allowing the PICOP to manage train movements in, out and within a possession. In the incident described in this report, suitable office facilities might have prevented the day PICOP from losing the train running documentation, and allowed both PICOPs to observe the position of the tamper and identify the discrepancies in the information being provided.

[MVR S&T]

Ok get the point, in the Signaliing centre then..

[JontyMort]

Ok get the point, in the Signaliing centre then..

One suspects that those concerned may well be spending more time at home in future.