The media is awash with stories of the ‘Digital Railway’ – from digital asset management to smart ticketing for passengers – the railway industry is embracing the digital revolution with both hands. However, walk into most train maintenance depots and you’ll get a different picture entirely – paper piles, noticeboards, bursting filing cabinets – the rail back office hasn’t yet joined the revolution with such vigour!
Yet with thousands of rail workers passing through depot doors every year – this is an area that equally warrants the efficiencies that ‘going digital’ can offer. So, we’ve been conducting our very own little revolution – starting with digitising worksite safety inductions…
Typically, worksite inductions at depots involve lengthy face-to-face sessions where local managers spend lots of time sharing information and describing the risks. This can be labour intensive and, depending on the manager, the quality of the training delivery can vary. The induction also often happens the moment a visitor sets foot on site – expecting them to digest a lot of new material in a short space of time. Hardly conducive to effective learning.
This is why we’ve developed SiteSentinel – a unique online worksite safety induction solution allowing depot visitors to complete an induction before they even arrive on site, ensuring they arrive equipped and ready for work with the necessary competency certificates and worksite awareness.
The added bonus is that the whole induction process is captured and stored online, giving depots an easily accessible audit trail. They can quickly confirm who has been inducted at the site and when. A short online test at the end also gives depot managers the necessary assurances that visitors understand the safety issues before they even arrive on site.
And we’re not the only ones helping to build a ‘Digital Depot’ – we’re proud to be joined in our back office revolution by the likes of Zonegreen (depot protection through intelligent technology) and Alcumus Sypol (COSHH online management system).
So, how long will it take for the rest of the rail industry to wake up to the benefits of digitising the back office?