Safety Matters

[alwaysinjured]

Lecky, the race plan is not an alternative to the FRA’s documentation; it’s a good idea for an RO to have one regardless of whose rules the race is under. The FRA documentation offers no help with producing one.
The race plan needn’t be anywhere near as big as AI is suggesting either.

The key thing is that the ‘rules’ are on one or two pages only, and everything else is at the RO’s discretion. It’s his/her plan. He/she can make it a big or as small as desired.

We will provide a template if one is requested and help with filling it in (it’s currently happening with Pendle Cloughs) but the RO decides what he needs to document what he does, to ensure the race goes as planned, and no-one goes missing.

This is a normal approach in safety management, is preferred by insurers, and makes the ROs position more defensible in a court scenario.

The FRA’s multifarious rules are more likely to be used to defend the FRA and leave the RO hung out to dry… As AI has already explained concisely in 1.5 million words

Andy. A race plan involving 50 people, ( I guessed at simply on the purported scale of three peaks - I may be off on that, but it is surely more than 30?) having a page for each person is already 50 pages long, one for each. With standardized function, it could be reduced to one per group, but problems can come out of that.

Do not underestimate the size of it. I have rarely seen a works plan or standard operating procedure for teams of people shorter than 2* the number of people.
If and assuming (which would be mandatory as far as I am concerned) you want those pages to pull out for each person, then a lot of that is whitespace. Only if MOST of the people are doing exactly the same thing can the same task list be given to several. And that is rare in reality.

That is the point. Taking 100 pages as a number out of context until you see what they comprise is not a good basis on which to discuss.

The difference between most of those criticing and me, is I have had to go there and do it. Procedures for large teams of people to do things which are inherently hazardous on many engineering projects. And the KEY to it all is simplicity of communication and that alone generates paper. Even if one mans job is only three lines long, it is better to make a single bit of paper labelled with his name, so he does not get confused with the rest or with what others have to do. Experience speaking.
That is why "joint marshal briefings" except to refer to exceptional matters, are a problem in the making, and it was very unwise for FRA to mandate it. One man hearing the job that someone else has to do. One man assuming that someone else was going to the job that he has to do. Verbal communications often misinterpreted, and incapable of being replayed. That is how accidents happen.