REGISTER

George Erdos

Chairman IRSE Australasian Section Licensing Sub Committee

This paper builds on recent events in the rail industry both in Australia & the UK and explains the need for adopting an accreditation scheme, in Australia, for employees involved in the profession of railway signalling and telecommunications. The paper further looks at the reason for adopting the UK IRSE licencing scheme and progress made to-date in Australia for implementing this scheme.

The IRSE licencing scheme was first conceived in the UK. It stems from a number of major rail signalling related disasters, including the Clapham Junction accident. As a result of these  accidents an independent UK board of inquiry found it necessary to recommended that only "Competent Employees", skilled in the profession of railway signalling/telecommunications should be allowed to work on railway safety critical signalling systems. It was considered that this could be best achieved by a process of accreditation/licencing and continuous auditing.

British Rail (BR) and London Underground (LUL) subsequently began examining mechanisms by which they could best introduce an employee certification scheme. They eventually considered that the lnstitution of Railway Signal Engineers (UK) would be ideally suited to undertake this independent certification task. Although the scheme has been developed at the specific request of British Rail and London Underground it is designed to be flexible enough to be adopted by almost any country. The IRSE (UK) is infact encouraging its overseas membership to review the scheme for possible adoption as appropriate.