| Summary |
The “Regulations for Railway Operation,” which was revised in 2022, required railway operators to establish Safety Management Systems (SMS). This study develops a set of mechanisms, criteria and tools To to assist operators in assessing the conformity and the effectiveness of their SMS and allow, the railway supervision agency in Taiwan, Railway Bureau, MOTC, to inspect the operation of each SMS.
This study reviews SMS-related assessment mechanisms, criteriacriteria, and tools for foreign railway, civil aviationaviation, and other industries, and takes the current railway safety oversight framework, including the Railway State Safety Program (RSSP), into consideration. This study then concludes the self-assessment mechanism and supervisory inspection mechanism applicable to operators and the supervision agency, respectively. Furthermore, this study also refers to the review results and previous research to ,develop 36 assessment criteria and detailed tools, which
include the preliminary assessment tool and the self-assessment/effectiveness-inspection tool. Operators can use the developed criteria and tools developed to assess and improve the conformity and the effectiveness of their SMS; Railway Bureau can use the same ones to inspect the SMS compliance with the regulatory requirements, verify the self-assessment results, and make recommendations.
To ensure each SMS and the corresponding assessment mechanisms can be effectively operated, this study suggests that authorities concerned take appropriate actions as follow: Firstly, they should review and renew the developed tools; Next, they should improve the effectiveness of the developed mechanisms by developing training courses, defining regulatory requirements and producing relevant guides; Lastly, they should try to integrate some of the safety-related mechanisms by introducing management maturity models and safety culture models to ultimately comprehensively improve railway safety. |
