The announcement of £4m fines for Network Rail over the 1999 Paddington train crash should be a wake-up call for engineering sector leaders to put safety at the centre of their corporate culture.
Railtrack, the company responsible for maintaining rail and signalling equipment at the time of the crash, admitted numerous failures in procedures which led to a commuter train passing a red signal and colliding with a First Great Western express train, killing 31 passengers and injuring more than 400. Network Rail, which took over Railtrack in 2002, is liable for the fines.
It now appears that problems with the signal had been known for five years before the crash, but the company had failed to act.
Engineering companies have a number of priorities. In addition to producing the best products they can, keeping abreast of ceaseless developments in technology and maintaining their position against competitors at home and overseas, they have to ensure they comply with financial and environmental legislation; and, of course, they must turn a profit to satisfy their shareholders. But first and foremost, they have a responsibility to ensure that their activities are safe, and that risks to employees, the public and, where appropriate, users of their services are minimised.
Recent findings from the enquiry into the explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery in 2005, along with the evidence presented at last week’s Network Rail sentencing hearing, shows that all too often, safety is almost an afterthought in corporate culture. It’s neglected at board level, making it hardly surprising those attitudes are lax throughout the company structure. But this attitude leads, literally, to disaster.
Rail safety campaigners are pressing for the Network Rail fines to be levied directly against the board members. Their argument, and it’s a compelling one, is that if the fines are paid from company profits, it’s ultimately the passengers who will pay. But it’s clear that the intention of the fine is to ensure that the engineering sector must ensure that, first and foremost, their activities are safe.
Avoiding fines and compensation claims should surely be less of an incentive than ensuring that sloppy procedures don’t cause death and injury. We can only hope that the message gets through.
Stuart Nathan
Special Projects Editor
The article perhaps does not draw on the lessons from the Texaco Valdez and BP’s disaster in Texas, which show that in both cases the Board were aware of shortcomings in the Health and Safety regime.
Allowing decisions at Board level to be paid at shareholder level is really no use as the culture remains the same. By the way, everyone remembers the Texaco Valdez but the operating company responsible for the safe operation was BP – bit of a trend really.
Why blame the engineers who are often put under extreme presure from the bean counters and shareholders? These are the people put safety at the back.
I was never a great fan of nationalisation and the lack of public accountability that seemed to go with it but the more I see and hear of the operation of de-nationalised industries and services the more I hear myself bemoaning the primary goal of profit before public safety.
The rot, I feel, goes much deeper than the railways but these do serve as an example of the general losing of the plot that seems to have beset successive governments.
Nobody wants to pay more tax and everybody wants to see efficiency and value for money but this should not end up with the provision of a national infrastructure, which could probably make a significant contribution to the nation’s carbon footprint reduction, being run primarily for shareholder profit.
I’m sure that Network Rail would argue this last point, but if my pension pot were invested in their shares I’m sure I would want to see profits, and my pension fund, maximised. Is this what you might call a conflict of interests? I’m coming round to the view that nationalisation might actually be the best solution, although that would probably cause nightmares about increasing public spending and borrowing and, ultimately, taxation.
Engineers can only do so much before they have to be adequately supported by funding.