Inquiries and Inspections

There were no independent investigations involving a person’s death, serious injury or major damage to property conducted under the direction of the Director Rail Safety for the year under review.

The Director Rail Safety issued a number of instructions in accordance with Section 39(3) of the Rail Safety Act for the organisation to conduct an investigation and provide a written report.

Investigations into Category A occurrences included:

• The derailment of a track machine at Daglish.
• The collision of a Prospector railcar engine compartment door and a signal at Merredin.

Notifiable Occurrences

During the year there were eight Category A and 427 Category B incidents reported, a marked increase on previous years. This reflected the altered requirement to report in accordance with the National Definitions.

Reporting in accordance with the National Definitions commenced on January 1, 2005. The 2005/06 figures will be the first year that all the reporting will be carried out in line with the new requirements.

2. Occupational Safety and Health

The strong focus on safety and health as a core value of the organisation continued during the past year. Training in occupational safety and health continued to be a priority with many managers and supervisors completing a two-day training course on their occupational safety and health responsibilities.

Safety committees continued to function effectively. Safety representatives attended a transitional training course for the changes to the Act, which included Provisional Improvement Notices.

OSH Reporting System

The SiteSafe reporting system, which was launched on 1 July 2004, enables the organisation to capture reported hazards, near misses and incidents and will facilitate interrogation of data to analyse trends. Ongoing training in the use of the system is being provided to people at all levels of the organisation.

The system has been expanded to include the recording and management of workers’ compensation claims.

Injury Management

In 2004/5, the PTA implemented improved workers’ compensation and injury management practices, focussing in particular on the management of claims within the Transit Guard area.

The Injury Management Coordinator has the responsibility to manage each individual case in accordance with the Workers’ Compensation and Injury Management Act. Professional advice, to assist in difficult claims, is sought when necessary.

The new approach undertaken for case management of these claims significantly reduced the turn-around from date of injury to return to normal duties.

Whereas the total number of injuries sustained by PTA employees remained steady from 2003/04, the number of lost-time injuries decreased markedly in 2004/05. The lost-time injury frequency rate for the organisation for the year was 48.63 per million hours worked, compared with 83.03 for the previous year.

This improvement is primarily due to a decrease in the Transit Guard area.These results suggest that the PTA’s improved workers’ compensation and injury management practices are functioning to get employees back to meaningful work sooner after an injury, which has associated positive effects on the length and cost of claims, as well as employee morale and wellbeing.

Health Assessment Standards

On July 1 2004 the National Transport Commission introduced the National Standard for Health Assessment of Rail Safety Workers. The standard applies to all rail safety workers as defined in the Rail Safety Act. The Standard relates to health assessments and procedures for monitoring the health and fitness of workers to perform rail safety duties. There is a phase-in period for all the rail safety medicals to be undertaken, dependent on the risk category of the worker.

Procedures have been developed and processes have been put in place to ensure that the PTA completes the relevant medicals in the allotted time frame. A Health Management Plan is in place which documents the process for managing employees who are deemed temporarily or permanently unfit for their particular risk category.

Category 1 rail safety critical workers are due to have all medicals completed by December 2005. This group includes all train drivers and the PTA is on target to complete the medicals within the required timeframe. Category 2 rail safety critical workers have a further six months to complete their medicals. Category 3 and 4 medicals are required as they become due.

Testing for Alcohol and Other Drugs

Random testing of employees and contractors for alcohol and other drugs continued throughout the year as part of the organisation’s alcohol and other drugs control program. No adverse trends were identified.