Managing contractors on the railway

The major incidents at Ladbroke Grove in 1999, Hatfield in 2000 and Potters Bar in 2002 all focussed attention on the use of contractors on Britain’s railway network. Lord Cullen in his second report of the Ladbroke Grove Rail Inquiry expressed particular concern about Railtrack’s (now Network Rail) use of contractors, and made a number of specific recommendations in this area.

Health and Safety Commission report on use of contractors in the maintenance of railway infrastructure

Following these concerns, the Health and Safety Commission published a report on the use of contractors in the maintenance of the railway infrastructure. It concluded that the past twenty years had seen a growth in the use of contractors worldwide as companies have sought to reduce the size in line with their core competencies and contract out other work.

This can bring advantages in terms of using specialists for tasks rather than having to maintain inappropriate levels of expertise within the company. It should be remembered that health and safety law is neutral on whether work should be done in-house or by contractors.

Contracting itself is neither good nor bad. It is entirely possible to run a safe operation using contractors so long as safety management systems are robust, and it is not necessarily true that in- house operations are better managed. These are commercial decisions which do not fall under our statutory duties

It is true however that contracting out work can bring problems at the interface, in particular with co-ordination, communication and competence.

Although there have been major changes on how contractors are used on the railway, particularly Network Rail’s decision to bring track maintenance work in-house, this report is still of interest because of how it sets contracting in context.

Strategic Aims

Following the commissioning of some research the previous year, in 2005 we consulted on a draft intervention strategy. Further internal discussions both within the Health and Safety Executive and our inspectorate have led to the production of a strategy. Its two key strategic aims are:

- To ensure that major clients have robust and effective arrangements for establishing safe procurement processes and adequate control of contractors on site

- To improve the safety management systems of key contractors working in the rail industry to achieve both a safer operating railway and safe and healthy conditions for contractors and those affected by their activities.

This is delivered through interventions directly with dutyholders (both those who are clients and those who are contractors and sub contractors) and through discussions with the industry associations who represent these companies.

Last updated: 25 February 2008

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