Rail Infrastructure Safety: Beyond Policies and Procedures

In the UK and internationally, rail and infrastructure projects operate in high-risk, high-pressure environments. While regulations and procedures play a critical role, they alone are not sufficient to protect workers, passengers, and reputations.

Indeed, safety is often still perceived as a compliance activity—something to tick off. However, this approach ignores a fundamental truth: the majority of incidents stem not from systems failures, but from human behaviour. As such, behavioural safety in rail infrastructure must move from the margins to the centre of operational leadership.

According to the UK’s Office of Rail and Road (ORR), 41% of worker injuries in 2022–23 were caused by human or organisational factors, not unsafe equipment or environments. Moreover, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) has consistently reported that human error contributes to over 75% of operational safety incidents in the sector. Clearly, something needs to change.

Behavioural Risk: The New Frontier in Rail Safety

Although engineering excellence and compliance systems reduce exposure to hazards, they do little to influence how individuals respond under stress or how teams communicate in complex, dynamic environments.

In fact, near-miss data suggests that underlying behavioural issues often go unreported. The ORR has identified poor reporting culture as a critical challenge, citing that many frontline workers do not feel empowered—or safe enough—to raise behavioural concerns. Consequently, risks remain hidden until a serious incident brings them to light.

Therefore, for CEOs, COOs, and Health & Safety Directors, the conversation must evolve: from “Did we follow the rules?” to “How do our people behave, communicate, and make decisions under pressure?”

MyPeople’s Safety Profiling Tool: Bridging the Gap

To meet this challenge, the MyPeople Safety Profiling Tool was designed to uncover and manage behavioural safety in rail infrastructure—proactively, practically, and at scale. Rather than relying on assumptions, this tool provides leadership with evidence-based insights at every level of the organisation.

Below are the four key dimensions of impact:

1. Organisational-Level Insight: Measuring Behavioural Risk Across the Workforce

At the organisational level, safety interventions are often reactive. After an incident, more training is provided. However, without data, training is often misaligned or redundant.

With MyPeople, leaders gain visibility into:

• Organisational safety mindsets across business units and regions
• Gaps between formal policies and informal behaviours
• Communication patterns that either support or undermine safety culture

These insights allow you to target the right training to the right people—not just where a checklist says it’s needed.

📌 Example: A UK-based infrastructure company found that behavioural risk was highest in mid-level supervisors, despite strong compliance on paper. Coaching these leaders improved near-miss reporting by 37% over two quarters.

2. Team-Level Profiling: Creating Safer, More Cohesive Project Teams

Project delivery in rail involves multiple contractors, vendors, and subcontractors working side-by-side. As a result, behavioural inconsistencies can pose significant risks—even when all parties are technically qualified.

MyPeople allows operational teams to:

• Assess behavioural tendencies within new or temporary teams
• Identify communication risks before mobilisation
• Adapt site briefings and safety messaging to reflect team composition

This team-level intelligence is especially useful for joint ventures and projects across culturally diverse regions, such as the GCC or transnational freight routes.

🔍 Insight: On a major rail electrification project, applying MyPeople profiling to cross-functional teams helped reduce first-90-day incident rates by more than 30%, simply by improving communication alignment.

See how Tier 1 contractors leverage MyPeople for scalable safety improvement.

The real strength of the MyPeople Safety Profiling Tool lies in its ability to personalise safety at the individual level. Each employee receives a tailored behavioural profile that highlights specific risk areas, communication styles, and development needs. This level of insight enables leaders to take meaningful, targeted action.

3. Individual Insight: Targeted Development and Accountability

As a result, organisations can implement:

• Proactive coaching plans for individuals in high-risk roles
• Behavioural improvement strategies tailored to real tendencies
• Development pathways that foster personal accountability for safety

📈 For Health & Safety Leaders, this level of granularity is critical. It provides clear, measurable data that supports both compliance and cultural transformation goals. Leadership can see exactly where each team member falls on the behavioural safety curve—ensuring that coaching, mentoring, and training are aligned with actual risk, not assumptions.

📈 From a C-suite perspective, you no longer have to rely on lagging indicators or assume your workforce is adequately trained. Instead, you’ll know—with data-backed certainty—whether your people are aligned with your safety culture, or where timely interventions are required.

4. Supporting Behavioural Training: Move Beyond Procedural Learning

While procedural training remains essential, it addresses what to do, not why people fail to do it. Behavioural Safety training, on the other hand, teaches people how to think, act, and respond under real-world pressures.

Importantly, research from the RAC Foundation found, behavioural interventions (like speed awareness courses), result in far lower re-offence rates than purely punitive or skills-based programmes. Specifically, the study found that drivers who attended a SAC were 23% less likely to re-offend in the following three years.

MyPeople enables training partners to:

• Focus their curriculum on the actual behavioural needs of each worker
• Track improvement over time
• Demonstrate ROI on behavioural safety training

With MyPeople, behavioural training can be:

• Customised based on real-world profiling
• Measured over time to track improvement
• Integrated with technical training for a complete development path

🎯 Strategic Value: Training budgets are stretched. Behavioural data helps you invest where it will actually shift outcomes. Behavioural safety training works best when it’s frequent, personalised, and data-led—not just a box ticked every 12 months.

Leading Safety with Insight: A C-Suite Imperative

Behavioural safety is no longer just the domain of the Health & Safety department. For executive leaders, it’s now a business-critical lever for performance, reputation, and compliance.

Embedding behavioural safety in rail infrastructure means:

• Fewer site shutdowns and costly project delays due to avoidable incidents
• Improved team accountability, workforce engagement and retention
• Stronger stakeholder confidence, including regulators and insurers
• A data-backed strategy that aligns with ESG, social responsibility goals and long-term brand value

As the UK rail sector embraces decarbonisation, digitalisation, and infrastructure expansion, those organisations that understand and lead behaviourally will outpace those that don’t.

Learn more about strategic rail safety leadership in our Whitepaper.    

Ready to go beyond compliance and lead with data-backed insight?

The MyPeople Safety Profiling Tool helps you unlock behavioural intelligence—improving safety outcomes, reducing risk, and empowering smarter decisions.

👉 Visit www.mypeoplegroup.com or book a discovery call with one of our behavioural safety specialists.

References

• Office of Rail and Road (2023). Railway Safety Statistics Annual Report 2022–23
• RSSB (2022). Human Factors in Railway Incidents Report
• ORR (2022). Improving Near Miss Reporting: Industry Insights
• European Union Agency for Railways (2023). Railway Safety Performance Report
• HSE UK (2023). Managing for Health and Safety (HSG65)
• Cooper, M. D. (2000). Safety Culture Model, Safety Science
• RAC Foundation (2022). Speed Awareness Behavioural Impact Study