Organisational ergonomics: a case study from the railway systems area

Organisational ergonomics covers human factors issues in the design of operational structures and the management of organisations. Railway systems have to perform to very high levels of safety and reliability while using minimal resources in terms of staff, fixed equipment, rolling stock and investment. They have to achieve this with a distributed infrastructure and with staff dispersed over a large geographic area. Approaches to the management of railways have changed dramatically over the past 20 years, from integrated railway undertakings with military hierarchies to legal frameworks involving many co-operating bodies. The author of the present paper analyses the structures put in place for the management of infrastructure maintenance on Britain´s railways and highlights the most significant failings of the current system. He then develops some ideas on how to improve the structure and procedures based on an organisational ergonomics approach