The Safety Management Intelligence System cause form data is used to inform and address industry safety decisions. This webinar is the first in a series designed to enhance understanding of human factors concepts such as situation awareness, improve data quality and support cause form entry.

Join RSSB’s team as they explain the importance of understanding situation awareness (SA) in investigations, how it is applied to the SMIS cause form and and questions to ask as an investigator to understand underlying causes of incidents involving SA.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) describe a signal passed at danger (SPAD) as an event that occurs when a train passes a stop signal when not allowed to do so.

Over the past 100 years there have been several significant SPAD accidents including Harrow and Wealdstone (1952), Southall (1997) and Ladbroke Grove (1999). These events led to the introduction of train protection systems such as the Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) through understanding system errors identified as underlying causes of SPADs, in addition to human performance.

The Safety Management Intelligence System (SMIS) is an online health and safety reporting and business intelligence software. All GB mainline railway undertakings and infrastructure managers input and extract safety data from the system.

SMIS collects information on thousands of safety events each year. The human performance factor (HPF) and 10 incident factor (10IF) framework was built into SMIS in 2019. This framework has been incorporated into the Railway Industry Standard, RIS-3119-TOM Accident and Incident Investigation and so is considered industry best practice.

The SMIS Causes Form provides an industry-wide mechanism for collecting underlying cause data so that you can identify trends in accidents and make informed safety decisions.