Reaching out to the world — International Engineering Safety Management (IESM)

The work described in this paper was instigated to meet the needs of the international railway community, by helping to: (1) Tackle the pressures from increased complexity of railway systems; (2) Address decreased public and passenger tolerance for avoidable accidents; (3) Focus spending on preventing incidents and smooth the way for acceptance of new technology or novel applications. Significant development in risk-based safety engineering has continued in recent years through CENELEC standards, new legislation and associated guidance plus practical experience of their application. The former source of good practice guidance, the UK rail industry, so called “Yellow Book” [1], had been given withdrawn status because it had become out of date and RSSB have developed alternative guidance focusing on the needs of the UK mainline rail industry. Despite being out of date, the former guidance was used outside the UK mainline railway group and extensively outside the UK, not just in English speaking areas - because people found it useful. By sharing good practice, the new international Engineering Safety Management (iESM) provides guidance to help projects and new railways to meet emerging new requirements including: (1)Common Safety Method for Risk Evaluation and Assessment [2] which has been established in European legislation and mandated on some railways. (2) CENELEC EN50128 [3] on railway software which was re-issued in 2011. (3) Recent technical reports supporting CENELEC EN50129 on Cross Acceptance [4] and Safety Assurance [5].