Improving of the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency’s guidance drafting procedures

It appears, based on the investigation, that the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency does not have a systematic approach to drawing up rail transport operation guidelines and ensuring compliance with the associated common safety method for risk evaluation and assessment (‘CSM’). From the perspective of safety management, the guidelines mostly focus on the risks involved in introducing new procedures and fail to recognise the risks associated with the performance of the existing guidance on a daily basis. The members of the Rail Safety Committee keep changing, as a result of which its decisions lack a long-term perspective.

The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency improve its guidance drafting procedures so as to better recognise the effect of guidelines on safety and to systematically analyse and document the risks involved in introducing new guidelines also in respect of rail transport operation.

The effectiveness of rail transport operation guidelines should be tested in practice before they are adopted, and enough feedback should be collected about their performance.