Tomorrow's Railway and Climate Change Adaptation Final Report

in Scotland, with some work being undertaken in England to move towards multiagency
working
• Evidence-based decision making. Extreme weather thresholds do not currently exist
at a national level within the railway industry, or in a multi-agency manner. There is
little trust in the accuracy of weather predictions, though relationships exist in the
weather forecasters’ contribution to EWAT telephone calls. (Note: Extreme weather
thresholds do exist at a national level within the rail industry; they form part of
Standard 7.1 'Managing the Weather' and are also part of the 'National Control
Instructions' (NCIs) which activate the Extreme Weather Action Team (EWAT)
procedure
• Lessons learned. A challenge exists around sharing learning from extreme weather
events internally within organisations, as well as both regionally and nationally.
Largely, learnings do not feed into future strategies to improve the resilience of the
railway, rather they relate to the response and recovery phase than any systematic
long term improvement.
• Public communications. There is a lack of consistency when it comes to
communication between agencies. This causes a risk of exposure for reputational
harm.
Each of these themes is explored in more detail in the full Task 6BC report and its
associated appendix.
Three specific examples of multi-agency practice were then evaluated using the
BS11000 Collaborative Business Relationships standard. A high-level implementation
plan was developed to explain how the rail industry might approach the implementation
of these practices. The examples explored, with an implementation plan developed,
were:
• Rail industry involvement in Local Resilience Forums/ Local Authority Response
planning
• Collaborative agreements for chainsaw resource sharing
• Encouraging inter-modal shift in times of extreme weather impact.
The conclusions drawn by this report show there is potential for much improved
collaboration between the rail industry and other organisations, sectors and
infrastructure owners/ maintainers.
4.25 Task 6D Implementation Support, Humber Region
case study
Task 6D involved a case study which focused on understanding and assessing
collaboration and lessons learned practices within the Humber Region. The study tested
and evaluated the Task 6B&C recommendations based on a regional case study and
reports on the value of these recommendations.
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