ORR and HSL to develop and promote use of risk management model

ORR developed RM3 as a tool for assessing and managing an organisation's ability to control health and safety risks, to help identify areas for improvement and provide a benchmark for year on year comparison. RM3 is helping guide the rail industry to excellence in health and safety risk management. Best performing companies are those which have fully integrated health and safety practices into their culture.

RM3 sets out criteria for policy, governance and leadership which describe the steps used to evaluate a company’s progress from ad-hoc to excellent safety management capability. It defines what excellent management looks like, including:

• Leaders inspiring confidence and commitment, safely taking their teams through periods of change
• Making full use of employees’ potential and actively involving them to develop shared values and a culture of trust, openness and empowerment
• Health and safety policy being used to challenge the organisation to achieve business performance which is in line with the best-performing organisations.

RM3 has been adopted by the UK railway industry and is also being taken up by the European Railway Agency and being implemented by railways in Hong Kong and Dubai.

HSL, in partnership with ORR, will now develop RM3 to support the rail industry to achieve excellence in health and safety risk management. The focus of activity for the coming year will be:

• Making sure that RM3 continues to reflect best practice in risk management, drawing on the latest academic thinking along with experience from the rail sector and beyond
• Offering training which enables delegates to develop a thorough understanding of what makes a good management system and why they need one; how they can use RM3 within their organisation, and how an inspector can use RM3 to assess risk management arrangements
• Developing a community of practice that will enable the sharing of insight into the use of the tool and good practice in health and safety risk management.
  

To help industry learn more about RM3, HSL are organising a number of events, with an RM3 training course being held on 16/17th July, and the IOSH RM3 Practitioner Forum on 23rd July . Both of these events will be held at HSL’s Buxton site, in the Peak District.

More information on RM3 is available at: http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/2623/management-maturity-model.pdf

Overview of the RM3 Model: http://www.hsl.gov.uk/what-we-do/rm3-model