Fatigue has been found to be a factor in 21 per cent of all high-risk incidents in the rail industry. Some of the effects of serious fatigue are comparable to being over the drink driving limit: poor judgements, slow reactions, poor memory and impaired vision among others.
One factor that affects levels of fatigue is work patterns. The RSSB and Office of Rail and Road (ORR) both publish numerical guidelines on shift pattern design. There have been ongoing discussions in the industry about whether different working patterns adequately manage fatigue risk, while meeting requirements to build, maintain and operate the railway. It is therefore important that there is an evidence-based set of shift pattern design guidelines for the rail industry.
RSSB conducted a literature review aimed to gather the data necessary to update and complete the existing shift pattern design guidelines.
It identified 23 papers relevant to shift patterns and fatigue, including 13 papers which present data and evidence based on rail staff. These papers cover a range of types of evidence: systematic reviews, field studies, experimental studies, surveys, and literature reviews.
The literature review published can be used by companies to review how rostering practices can be improved and better aligned with current scientific knowledge. They may be used to make updates to industry guidelines in future.
Originally the research planned to build on the literature review evidence, by producing recommendations for updating numerical guidelines on roster design and delivering a set of ‘good practice’ example rosters.
These activities would require significant input and collaboration from many organisations across the industry to be successful. However, due to the range of changes and the current industry priorities it was agreed not to proceed with further work at this stage.
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