Comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Assessment System at Russian Railways (RZD)

The Evolution of the Control System: From Formal Logbooks to Digital Transparency

Managing occupational health and safety across the country's largest employer requires a systematic approach capable of covering hundreds of thousands of employees. In his presentation, Andrey Lisitsyn, Head of the Ecology and Technosphere Safety Department at Russian Railways (RZD), breaks down the process of transforming the traditional three-tier control system into a modern Comprehensive Occupational Health and Safety Assessment System at the Enterprise (KSOOT).

The control system with paper logbooks, historically established since 1981, gradually turned into a routine formality. The main problem was the breakdown of feedback between managers and workers. The speaker shows, using the example of RZD, how the transition to a process approach made it possible to create a transparent and working tool for involving personnel in safety issues.

Multi-Level Architecture of KSOOT: How It Works in Practice

The implemented KSOOT system is built on several levels of control, each of which has its own clear tasks and implementation tools.

First Level: Involving Every Employee

The basic level of control is carried out directly at the workplaces. The key innovation is the ability of any employee, not just a manager or an authorized HSE representative, to record an identified violation. For this purpose, non-conformity sheets placed in accessible locations are used.

The process is formalized through checklists: 11 key items are checked before starting work, and 8 items during the day. Identified non-conformities are ranked by degree of danger using visualization (the "safety cross"):

• Red: dangerous violations requiring immediate stoppage of work and evacuation of people from the danger zone.
• Orange: warnings about injury risks.
• Yellow: less significant non-conformities with HSE requirements.
• Green: no remarks.
• Blue/Purple: recording of micro-injuries (which the company has been tracking since 2014).

Second and Third Levels: Audit and Scoring

The second level of control is conducted by the heads of production units (shop and section managers) by filling out a checklist covering 6 sections. Not only the current state is assessed, but also the effectiveness of the first level's work, including the timeliness of eliminating remarks.

The third level is a quarterly commission inspection chaired by the head of the enterprise. The checklist contains 50 questions (24 common to the company and 26 specific to the branch). Based on the results, a score is awarded, determining the status of the unit:

• Less than 60 points: critical non-conformity.
• 60 – 80 points: satisfactory.
• 80 – 90 points: partial conformity.
• 90 – 100 points: full conformity (allows reducing the frequency of inspections to once every six months).

Digitalization and Motivation: From Notice Boards to Mobile Apps

The scale of the company (over 700,000 employees) made the automation of KSOOT inevitable. The speaker details the evolution of tools: from paper sheets on notice boards to terminals and, finally, to mobile applications. The implementation of the "Driver's Personal Account" has already reached over 105,000 users, providing them with direct access to KSOOT functionality from personal devices, despite strict corporate information security requirements.

An important element of the system is the warning ticket system (green, yellow, red tickets), integrated with the training and knowledge assessment process. In addition, mechanisms for financial incentives for active participants in the process from the payroll fund are provided.

What You Will Learn from This Webinar:

• How to transform a formal three-tier control system into a working tool for employee engagement?
• By what criteria are violations ranked and how does risk visualization (the "safety cross") work?
• How to build a scoring system for assessing units and link it to the frequency of inspections?
• What steps are necessary to digitalize HSE processes across a large enterprise?
• How to ensure effective feedback with employees when non-conformities are identified?