Western Australian Current Regulations Western Australian Current Regulations (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.