By Ganymede
Network Rail, Works Delivery Off-Track, Doncaster
It was great to be invited to the Network Rail, Works Delivery Off-Track Safety Stand Down Day on 5th August. With the pandemic, over the last 18 months we have had to instigate alternative ways of delivering the safety messages, but as things have been improving, Network Rail put on a great event in Doncaster.
There were around 80 people in attendance, which was fantastic. Ganymede were invited to present some of our safety and sustainability initiatives to the workforce. We started with a reminder of our ‘Speak up’ campaign, which has been very well received by the industry, this is primarily based on the immediate causes of our accidents over a four-year period. Within this presentation we touched on a couple of recent incidents and shared the learning from the investigations, we shared the league table from our Lightfoot fleet system, which caused a lot of interest in the room! Our PPE provider, Safeaid, kindly attended and shared some information about the new PPE recycling scheme we are implementing with them.
Network Rail then delivered a session which focussed on equality and diversity in the workplace session which included video’s that shared experiences from some Network Rail employees, it was a very interactive session and got some good discussion in the room.
Next came the East Coast Stand Down which revisited a few fatalities the industry has experienced and some of the recent life changing incidents that have happened and covered the learning that the industry needed to apply. Complacency was the word of the day and this was reiterated when we watched the ‘It won’t happen to me’ video which covered the loss of Scott Dobson at Saxilby on 4 December 2012, Scott’s mum and friend very bravely attended the afternoon session and shared with the group the devastation of what’s left behind after an event like this.
It was great to see such a good turnout, and everyone seemed to take something from the day. We are looking forward to putting on some of our Safety Moment events later this year.
