Ben Gilmartin

Said the following about Nathalie Morgan:

“I would like to nominate Nathalie Morgan for the Safety Person of the Year award. Nathalie is the Safety Systems Manager for Great Western Railway (GWR), her main role and responsibility is ownership of the Safety Management System, Road Risk Management, and the Safety Risk Management Strategy.

I would like to nominate Nathalie for her innovative work on integrating the use of bowtie risk analysis in GWR’s safety monitoring and improvement activities. The work is a brilliant example of implementing the good practice framework and principles outlined in the RSSB rail policy document Taking Safe Decisions. GWR uses the bowtie risk models Nathalie has developed to understand safety risk and drive improvement in a wide range of areas, from passenger slips, trips and falls and managing overcrowding in stations, to managing hazards on trains and in depots, etc.

With Nathalie’s experience using the bowtie method in aviation, she recognised the benefits of implementing bowtie models within the GWR . Because of the work, GWR are able to assure themselves that they properly understand the hazards, threats, consequences, and what control measures they are responsible for as an operating company, and so they have a way of tracking whether safety controls are effective and efficient, and where more work is needed to ensure safety. This allows GWR to really focus on the improvements that will really make a difference to safety.

Using bowtie methodology is relatively new to the rail industry so Nathalie had to work hard to develop awareness and expertise in the company, to demonstrate its capabilities and how useful it can be as part of a company’s safety management system toolbox.

Again, following the good practice principles of Taking Safe Decisions, Nathalie brought together a wide range of representatives who understand the hazards from up close. Having health and safety representatives and all grades involved from the outset ensured that the buy-in of this new process would lead the way in organisational culture and how best to understand and manage safety risk collectively and consistently.

Nathalie’s project has taken 18 months to implement and GWR now have a baseline library of their top 15 safety and operational risks. As part of an ongoing monitoring process (again, in line with Taking Safe Decisions industry good practice), the bowtie risk models are reviewed every six months, when a significant change to a procedure / process has happened, or an accident / incident has occurred, so GWR knows its latest safety risk situation and can identify where more work is needed to meet its legal obligations of ensuring safety so far as is reasonably practicable.

The work has already been praised as a robust risk assessment methodology, demonstrating the management of key organisational risks with clarity, detail and with the appropriate stakeholder engagement. I’ve been impressed with the thoroughness of the GWR process and how the bowtie tool has been used to drive risk-based and targetted improvement in a complete set of key risk areas. The work has been methodical and rigorous, giving GWR confidence that risk is being managed appropriately and nothing falls through the gaps.

Since the implementation of bowties within GWR, Nathalie has collaborated with the Railway Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to share her experience and guide industry best practice on their wider implementation. Thanks to Nathalie’s work, GWR, a subsidiary of First Group Plc, are now leading the way within the railway industry. Nathalie is working with other First Group TOCs and RSSB to enable sharing and promoting best practice, which will enable wider collaborative working, and lead to other companies being able to benefit from the safety improvements brought about by the use of bowtie risk analysis.“