Reducing the Occurrence and Impact of Unplanned Operational Disruption Events on the Operational Railway, Human factors and Risk Management. A Knowledge Sharing Database.

Does the railway industry ever properly learn from best practice and mistakes? And how can knowledge ever be well shared in a multi-stakeholder industry that has suffered significant knowledge loss of the last generation? ... [ view full abstract ]

Does the railway industry ever properly learn from best practice and mistakes? And how can knowledge ever be well shared in a multi-stakeholder industry that has suffered significant knowledge loss of the last generation? Sharing knowledge is a powerful tool to be utilised within business, particularly a business where your aim is to keep London moving in a dynamic real-time environment, make it fit for the future and ensure it is sustainable, all with the vision of minimising delays and disruptions to the service.
For the last year, London Underground’s Station’s risk team have been developing a suite of tools to assist in reducing the occurrence and impact of unplanned operational disruption events on the operational railway that is caused as the result of works to assets. One of the tools is SwORD (Stations wide Operation Resilience Database) which is discussed further in this abstract. SwORD is a knowledge sharing database designed to assist end users in planning and identifying potential operational risks in their work on the railway. The process of developing SwORD has involved developing system and functional requirements using GOALS analysis, as well as user input and focus groups, to gain understanding as to what the purpose and outcome of it is.
SwORD focuses on the station the works are at, the specific work area and the activity being carried out. Each station, area and activity has an impact score based on the potential impact they have on the operation of the railway. For example, an operational incident at Kings Cross St Pancreas has a greater operational impact than an operational incident at Alperton due to the interconnecting stations and lines. In addition to the database of previous incident history, it has the capability for the user to add new information to keep the tool up to date.
SwORD is currently an Excel based tool that can be used on an iPad in-situ, bringing the knowledge-gain direct to the working environment. The evolution of SwORD would see it being developed into an on-line system available on both a desktop and mobile platforms.
The purpose of SwORD is to share knowledge and promote discussion between users and presentation at the workshop would therefore fully reflect the goals and the development philosophy of the project. The tool would be presented to human factors and rail professionals for hands-on consideration with the potential to identify and comment on features of usability and knowledge sharing and to see what further improvements can be made.