Fundamentals of Railway Human Factors and Error Management

Course Overview

Rail is one of the safest and most efficient transport modes, with significantly lower accident costs than road. However, human error remains the biggest challenge in improving rail safety, often leading to costly incidents, investigations, and operational disruption.

Key insights:

• Rail accident costs (BTRE): AUD $133 million
• Human performance limitations remain a critical safety risk
• Errors can result in major financial, legal, and reputational impacts
• Root causes of human error are often misunderstood or poorly analysed

This Railway Human Factors and Error Management course equips professionals to better understand and manage human error within complex rail systems.

Who Should Participate

This railway management course is designed for those individuals seeking a comprehensive understanding of applied rail human factors.

Expected participants include:

• Rail Operations and Engineering Senior Managers
• Team Leaders and Supervisors
• Human Resource Managers
• Rail Safety and WHS Managers, Investigators, and Auditors
• Quality, risk, compliance, and assurance managers

Key Benefits

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Understand the evolution of human factors in rail, its current scope, and how it may contribute to addressing future safety challenges in modern railway systems
• Understand human error within the context of significant rail safety incident investigations
• Incorporate practical, proactive error management strategies contextualised to rail operations
• Address human performance limitations that may impact effective decision-making and increase the probability of error occurrence
• Identify social and group influences that may shape human performance
• Adopt a systematic human factors analysis method for incident investigations to better identify errors and error-producing conditions

Course Information

Instructional Delivery Method: Scheduled Digital
Prerequisite & Advanced Preparation: Reading material will be sent prior to the course

Delivered by Dr Graham Edkins

Organisational Psychologist Dr Graham Edkins is considered one of Australia’s leading Safety Management and Human Factors experts and is regularly retained as an independent safety investigator and human factors expert witness for various civil and criminal matters.

Run this course in-house

Informa Connect Academy’s customised training solutions have helped organisations deliver tailored learning in different languages to suit every requirement.