Supervision

The CRR is required to ensure that each railway organisation and infrastructure manager certified or authorised by the CRR and operating in the State effectively manages the risks to the safety of persons associated with its activities. To achieve this the CRR has a small team focused on the task of supervising these railway organisations.

Each year the CRR reviews/develops multi-annual and annual supervision plans for every railway organisation operating in the State. The supervision plans include:

• Meeting with company executives to review their safety performance;

• Auditing the railway organisations regarding compliance with their respective safety management systems;

• Undertaking sample inspections of the railway organisation assets to ensure that they are fit for purpose.

• Undertaking reactive activity such as inspection on accidents, incident, dangerous occurrence or employee, public or other third party concerns.

The supervision plans that we develop are risk based, and the following information is used to inform us on the relative risk and the appropriate supervision resource to be applied:

• A railway organisation’s safety performance;

• Previous CRR supervision activities and outputs from the same;

• CRR’s professional judgement based upon

• Inspectors experience;

• Industry safety concerns arising from railway accidents and incidents, nationally and internationally;

• Complaints and representations by, or on behalf of staff, passengers, or affected parties; and

• Reactive monitoring, including post-incident compliance inspections.

Proportionality must be applied by the CRR and therefore supervision plans take into account factors such as the size and complexity of the railway organisation. In essence, the more exposed to risk a railway organisation is the more supervision they can expect.