1. Certification and Assurance
Stephen Clarke
Lead Signatory - Ricardo Certification
1st November 2018

2. About us
Ricardo Certification is an independent business within the Ricardo group that is accredited to provide assurance services by the relevant regulatory authorities.
We have extensive experience of performing third-party assessment roles on high profile projects:
In Europe we are the Notified Body and Assessment Body for the central section of London’s Crossrail and the migration of Denmark’s national network to ERTMS operation.
In Asia, we have supported the introduction of new signalling technologies, including the first to be developed by domestic suppliers, and their application on China’s metros and mainline railways
In the Middle East, we are the Independent Safety Assessor for Doha Metro and Riyadh Metro.

3. Scope of Services
Technical safety of systems and products – signalling systems, track, switches, rolling stock etc
Safety of the operating railway
application systems and products to the railway
railway operations (and maintenance)
A focus on helping our clients achieve approvals, certify their products and bring systems into service

4. UK Safety Approvals
In the UK, safety approvals for railway systems and operators of the railway are addressed in:
RIR 2011 (the Railway Interoperability Regulations)
ROGS 2006 (as amended in 2009)
New mainline railways and changes to the mainline railway will typically require application of the EU’s Common Safety Method – Risk Assessment Regulation (CSM-RA Regulation) – if the change is ‘significant’ an Assessment Body will be required to check compliance
Metro, Light Rail and Private railways do not need to apply CSM-RA, but a safety risk assessment is still required to show that the railway will be acceptably safe
FOCUS is SAFETY OF THE OPERATIONAL RAILWAY – Safe systems, safe operation

5. Risk Assessment as defined in CSM-RA
The CSM Risk Assessment Process has been applied for nearly 10 years
Network Rail requires that all infrastructure upgrade projects apply the CSM-RA Regulations
Only significant projects require an Assessment Body to check compliance
Problems with application of the CSM-RA Regulations
Applied to a very wide a range of projects
The requirement to record and address All Foreseeable Hazards
Benefits of the CSM-RA Regulations
Application of the three types of Risk Assessment Principle
Application of Codes of Practice to address hazards should be straightforward
[but many projects do not take advantage of the provisions provided for application of COP]

6. Risk Assessment as defined in CSM-RA
Lack of standardisation in approach to CSM-RA by projects
Lack of use of standard hazard records as starting points for hazard identification
Pockets of experience and lack of experience – especially when applying the process to large engineering works
Different approaches to assessment by ASBOs – levels of assessment detail vary, and there are various in- house ways of doing things
To improve consistency in Assessment there are:
a UK ASBO forum
an ERA ASBO Cooperation Group
[Note though when you review approaches across Europe though there are greater inconsistencies]

7. BREXIT impact? NO MATERIAL CHANGE to Safety Approvals in the UK
For INTEROPERATBILITY, EU NOBOs will need to be appointed by an EU-27 country
BUT ASBOs appointment/accreditations are generic and applicable everywhere
For INTEROPERABILTY Technical Standards for Interoperability - in time, the UK could diverge from those that are enforced in the EU
BUT, since the CSM-RA has a generic definition of a risk management process, there is no reason why the UK would apply a different process than applied to railways in the EU-27 countries
Note however that there will be an amendment to RIR 2011 and ROGS – principally to address the change in relationship with Europe
The requirement for risk assessment and compliance with CSM-RA will remain

8. Stephen Clarke
Ricardo Certification 5 St Mary’s Court Blossom Street
York, YO24 1AH
+44 (0)