Approach to health and safety

Occupational health and wellbeing matters as much as safety. Our commitment is to: 

• Raise the profile of occupational health and wellbeing. 
• Design and create positive workplaces that empower our people to thrive. 
• Eradicate, wherever possible, and minimise exposure to the top five causes of occupationally acquired illness and/or disease. 

To achieve this, we are: 

• Using independent research into the causes of those illnesses and diseases. 
• Developing next-generation systems that will monitor exposure to health risks in construction. 
• Improving worker wellbeing support. 
• Attracting more occupational health professionals into construction. 

Every member of our workforce has the right to go home unharmed.  

Our commitment is to:  

• Develop, promote and reward our frontline and operational supervisors for their safety leadership. 
• Maximise the use of technology and smarter ways of working. 
• Develop a Safe at Heart culture across the programme, empowering every individual to speak up and make safe decisions.

We are: 

• Developing how we measure safety culture 
• Using technology and innovation to improve shared learning. 
• Enhancing leadership and recognition in our supervisor community. 

We measure the impact and effectiveness of our health and safety interventions through robust assurance.  

Our commitment is to: 

• Identify potential issues using risk-based assurance. 
• Develop a culture of always learning, and people are empowered to report incidents. 

We are continuing to develop our processes and procedures for assurance and sharing what we learn.  

Everyone in our supply chain contributes to our health and safety culture. 

To create that culture we:  

• Select and develop our supply chain partners based on shared values safety leadership. 
• Hold each other to account for high standards of occupational health, safety and wellbeing. 

We are setting new standards by building our design capability to identify and eliminate health and safety risks in construction, maintenance and the future operation of the railway. 

We are: 

• Managing the impact of design and specification changes, ensuring health and safety is always our first consideration. 
• Wherever possible, design in a virtual environment to remove risk and error – reducing unnecessary design-related site visits. 
• Design infrastructure so routine trackside maintenance can be done outside operational hours. 

The interventions we will manage include: 

• Improving how we manage temporary works design. 
• Improving our knowledge and understanding of health risks during design stages. 

Building the railway affects the lives of thousands of people.   

Our commitment is to: 

• Get to know the communities along the route so we can understand the effects of construction on vulnerable people and respond in the best way we can. 
• Invest in the communities where are building the new rail network. 
• Plan our works to minimise adverse health, safety and wellbeing impacts on communities and our workforce. 
• Minimise road-related risks in communities and those in our supply chain driving to work. 

The safety themes we’re focused on are: 

• Enhancing our approach to road risk. 
• Developing our strategy for supporting vulnerable people affected by our works. 
• Enhancing our approach to specialist security. 

We are designing and building a railway that is safe for a future operational and maintenance workforce and passengers. 

Our commitment is to: 

• Protect our workforce when they work on or near the line. 
• Provide safe ways to access all areas of the infrastructure, including trackside, for future operations and maintenance workforce. 
• Design our railway and future train service to be safely operated. 

Our approach to managing this focus area is in line with the regulator’s requirements to bring the railway into safe operation. To achieve this, work areas include:  

• safety assurance processes 
• design and ergonomics, and 
• engaging with Network Rail.