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Sentinel Site Access: the key to stamp out double shifting

In our last edition, RTM talked to Network Rail programme manager for Sentinel, Andrew Bilous, who told us how workforce safety is improving thanks to increasing authentication rates on the rail infrastructure. In this article, Sentinel project manager, Angi Bell, explains more about Site Access and the changes due in January 2016, which will fundamentally alter the way the whole industry uses Sentinel. She also explains the work over the past 18 months to tighten the net on double shifters.

Site Access enhancements have been extremely challenging. The project team has worked tirelessly to bring a huge variety of different, and at times complex, infrastructure access arrangements into one place, to fit the whole industry. The biggest challenge here is to do it in a way that makes it easy and logical to use, while staying fully focused on the shared industry commitment to stamp out double shifting. While Site Access delivers significant safety benefits, it has also seized the opportunity to increase efficiency and give card-holders themselves something back. Through Site Access, Sentinel will be used every day. The redesign of mobile apps, in particular, makes this easy to achieve.

The Site Access changes

The new functionality enhances swipe-in capability, where users will be asked what location they are swiping-in to (location of work and not GPS), the role they will be undertaking on that shift, what time of day they left their place of rest, how long they are planned to work, and how long they anticipate taking to return to their place of rest at the end of the day.

Swipe-out is introduced – as a result the system will ‘alert’ if there has been less than 12 hours rest and require a record that a risk assessment has been completed for the worker before allowing access.

Site Access improves efficiency by recording site-specific inductions, avoiding briefing duplication, and acknowledgement of the trackside safety brief – replacing wet signatures on current paperwork. Finally, Site Access enables card-holders to electronically record use of competence, replacing this section of logbooks (or the whole thing, depending on the type of logbook used).

The new apps have increased offline capability to assist users with the challenges we all battle in terms of mobile data signal coverage. The new apps only require a signal for the swipe-in, so that the live ‘authority to work’ information can be retrieved from the database. This connectivity to receive live data is absolutely critical to be certain that a worker has the authority to work on the live infrastructure based on the validity of their medical, D&A (drugs and alcohol) and competence.

From that moment on, the apps work offline, benefiting users with improved service. As each ‘transaction’ is made with the apps, the user can continue at their own pace without interference. Site Access delivers a huge amount of benefit in terms of its functionality, but this last improvement really does put the icing on the cake for us.

‘The scope to really hit double shifting becomes sensational’

As exciting as Sentinel and Site Access are, we must never lose sight of the fact that it is our key to further reduce and deter double shifting, not just on the rail infrastructure but also in the areas away from rail such as construction sites. Now that Transport for London also uses Sentinel, the scope to really hit double shifting becomes sensational.

By delivering, and using, these enhancements – integrating Sentinel into a daily routine – we better arm ourselves not only against double shifting but also strengthen our abilities to better manage basic fatigue indicators. Site Access enables preventative rather than reactive measures to challenge these risks to our workforce.

I was fortunate enough to use the afternoon sessions of our recent Summits to introduce the changes to the audience in terms of functionality and fit to operational practice via innovative presentation packages. We listened to examples of real, emotive instances where double shifting has sadly contributed to fatalities of some of our workers, hitting home the importance of Site Access in Sentinel. In the last session we held an interactive segment where the audience got involved with the team in the showcase of the redesigned app and told me ‘what button (to press) next’.

This session was very enjoyable, received positive feedback and was my first real confirmation that we have succeeded in our goals to make the new apps logical, intuitive, user-friendly and easy to fit to our everyday routine. As the apps now reach their build conclusion we will continue to test these elements under User Acceptance Testing through November to make sure we deliver a gold standard upgrade to the current Sentinel system.

Sentinel Site Access continues to be a challenging and exciting development to lead, with the success so far a direct result of the huge contribution and collaboration from the start and ongoing between Network Rail, the supply chain, sponsors and trade unions. I very much look forward to rolling out our briefings and support mechanisms as we hurtle towards deployment by the end of January 2016.