REGISTER

W. Talbot

Major rail operations safety incidents such as collisions can be reduced, using railway signalling technology, by controlling the speed and spacing of trains. This provides the essential safety engineering system.

The installed signalling system will only provide it's safe control functions if their built-in fail safe properties are continuously monitored and maintained at predetermined and measurable levels of reliable performance.

The operations safety and engineering reliability requirements can be achieved by the implementation of quality assurance systems which are focused on the signalling system which are vital to the maintenance of the operating system. Quality assurance systems provide a methodology for the undertaking of work practices to a standard. Quality systems are employed to ensure routine work practices are carried out consistently and to a procedure but how does this apply to safety and safety systems used in the ranway industry and in particular signalling.

In this paper we explore the statement "Safety is the Quality Imperative for Signalling" and what it means to the development of quality systems, with some helpful hints towards developing a quality system.