Queensland Consolidated Regulations

RAIL SAFETY NATIONAL LAW NATIONAL REGULATIONS 2012 - REG 29

29 Fatigue risk management program

(1) For the purposes of section 116 (Fatigue risk management program) of the Law , when preparing a fatigue risk management program, a rail transport operator must take into account, and assess, any fatigue-related risks to safety arising from factors, including the following:

(a) scheduling of work and non-work periods, including time-on-task and rest opportunities in shifts and the total period of time in which work is being carried out;

(b) call-in, on-call and lift-up and lay-back arrangements and extended hours of work, including overtime;

(c) the impact of work scheduling and relief practices generally on social and psychological factors that may impact on performance and safety, including the effect of scheduling practices, schedule predictability and irregularity and control over work hours on sleep loss, performance and safety;

(d) physiological factors arising out of work practices affecting rail safety workers, such as the effect on worker alertness and recovery of the time when work is undertaken, the length and frequency of breaks, commuting time, circadian effects, extended wakefulness, chronic sleep loss effects, and sleep inertia;

(e) the kinds of rail safety work being carried out, including—

(i) work that requires significant physical exertion or high cognitive task demand; and

(ii) the degree of monotony or boredom or low cognitive task demand of the work;

(f) the variations in shifts and rest periods that may be required by different rail safety work requirements, including different routes, crew-call practices and predictability of working hours;

(g) the suitability of rest environments, including barracks, rest houses and relay vans provided for rail safety workers by the operator;

(h) the physical environment in which rail safety work is to be carried out, including climatic conditions, noise, vibration and fumes;

(i) fatigue risks arising from any one-off or occasional circumstances in which rail safety work may be required to be carried out, including in emergencies or under degraded or abnormal conditions, subject to the working hours being dependent on the rail safety workers’ indication of their fitness to continue;

(j) relevant developments in research related to fatigue and any technology that may be applied to manage work-related fatigue.

(2) A rail transport operator’s fatigue risk management program must establish and maintain documented procedures to manage, so far as is reasonably practicable, fatigue related risks, including—

(a) specified work scheduling practices and procedures that provide for—

(i) safe hours of work; and

(ii) safe periods of time between shifts; and

(iii) sufficient rail safety workers to be available to meet reasonably foreseeable demands for relief arrangements; and

(b) provisions for monitoring of hours of work, in particular—

(i) procedures for monitoring how actual hours of work of rail safety workers compare with planned hours of work for rail safety workers; and

(ii) procedures for monitoring the impact to changes to planned rosters due to shift swapping, overtime and on-call working; and

(c) provision of appropriate education and information in relation to the identification and management of fatigue risks that are relevant to the rail safety work being undertaken.

(3) For the purposes of subregulation (2)(a)(i) and (ii), hours of work or periods of time between shifts are taken to be safe if the effect of implementing those hours or periods is sufficient to manage risks arising from fatigue so far as is reasonably practicable.

(4) In addition to the requirements of the preceding subregulations, if a rail safety worker carries out rail safety work that includes—

(a) work of a kind referred to in Schedule 2 Part 1 in connection with railway operations in New South Wales in respect of which a rail transport operator is required to be accredited—the operator must comply at least with the work scheduling practices and procedures set out in Schedule 2 Part 1 , insofar as the worker is required to carry out any rail safety work in New South Wales; or

(b) work of a kind referred to in Schedule 2 Part 2 in connection with railway operations in Queensland in respect of which a rail transport operator is required to be accredited—the operator must comply at least with the work scheduling practices and procedures set out in Schedule 2 Part 2 , insofar as the worker is required to carry out any rail safety work in Queensland.

Note

The requirements of Schedule 2 do not preclude other conditions of work (such as shorter or less frequent shifts than those specified in the Schedule) from being provided by a rail transport operator to which this subregulation applies for the purposes of managing fatigue related risks.

(5) In this regulation—

"lift-up and lay-back arrangement" means an arrangement where a rail safety worker commences a shift at an earlier or later time than the time for which the worker was originally rostered.