Training program for drafting risk assessments

The European Union’s Common Safety Methods for Risk Assessment (CSM-RA) regulate the procedures that are to be followed within the European Union (EU) in case of safety-relevant and significant changes to railway systems. Switzerland has also adopted the EU standard.

According to the EU standard, any relevant changes must be subjected to a risk assessment. Depending on the issues involved, the procedure will tend to be more or less complex, and will to a large extent be dealt with simply on the level of the applicable norms and standards. However, it may also be necessary to carry out explicit risk assessments with explicit acceptance criteria. The completion of such risk assessments requires a great deal of expertise and experience.

Working together with the Swiss Federal Railways Company (SBB), EBP has developed and carried out a three-day training program for railway technicians. The content of the program encompasses formal process transaction, the execution of the individual risk-assessment procedures and an introduction to the related analytical instruments.

The training program has been designed for interactive participation, contains a variety of examples and exercises and offers participants ample opportunity for discussion, as well as the analysis of complete case studies.

In addition to intensive training, the first program offered the 13 participants from various SBB divisions an excellent platform for sharing their experience with other expert participants.