Sally also shared insights into how Tram Operations Limited are using the platform. Andy Wallace from Tram Operations Ltd said following their experience,..

“The level of dynamic risk is greater on a tramway than on heavy rail. Trams operate in both segregated and mixed traffic environments and as such our drivers find their trams regularly surrounded by pedestrians, cars and bicycles. We use the national occupational standards to evaluate our driver performance, but we wanted to strengthen our risk controls and felt electronic competence management was the right solution for our organisation.”

You can view Sally’s full presentation from the conference but playing the video.

Craig O’Brien, Engineering Manager for UK Tram said, “It is assumed that most organisations understand the importance of competence within the workplace and that it helps define how a person should perform their role. Given the safety critical nature of the majority of roles within the Light Rail sector, competence management is of essential importance. However, it is not deemed sufficient to identify competence requirements, there must also be a robust process for delivering, capturing and updating in order to adopt a culture of continued improvement as roles evolve. The light Rail sector is to some degree unique in many of its competence based tasks and therefore it cannot rely solely on existing methods in other industries. UK Tram along with its member organisations strongly believes that developmental competence management is at the core of its success and key to driving standards and safety. It is also a driving factor and direct link to other areas such as employee development and recruitment and can be a useful tool in aiding these processes. This is why the industry is committed to understanding the requirements for its personnel in order to make sure delivering competence is an integral part of the day to day structure of the numerous departments within these organisations”.

As well as the challenges facing the cities the conference also provided insight into some of the innovative solutions that are being offered for light rail.

We heard from UK Trams who are focused on sharing best practice across the industry and are actively involved in proactively identifying innovative solutions for the industry on behalf of their members.  David Keay and Laura Reardon shared some insights into the work they are doing with the Heads of Safety to develop a risk model that integrates with ORR RM3 processes. This has already been rolled out on Manchester Metrolink and is now being scheduled for 8 other regions.