Senior Cross-Functional Support - Essential for Implementing Corrective Actions at C³RS Sites

The Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Office of Railroad Policy and Development believes that, in addition to process and technology innovations, human factors-based solutions can make a significant contribution to improving safety in the railroad industry. This led FRA to implement the Confidential Close-Call Reporting System (C³RS), which includes voluntary confidential reporting of near-miss events and root-cause-analysis problem solving by a team composed of labor, management, and FRA; implementation of corrective actions; tracking the results of change; and reporting of the results of change to employees. FRA is also sponsoring a rigorous evaluation of three important aspects of C³RS functioning: (1) What conditions are necessary to implement C³RS successfully? (2) What is the impact of C³RS on safety and safety culture? (3) What factors help to sustain C³RS over time? This report is part of a series of Research Results published to provide the public with the evaluation’s findings. Two sets of findings are presented. The first set, the baseline of C³RS at one demonstration site, was obtained using two data sources: worker, manager, and other stakeholder interviews; and railroad newsletters. The second set of findings uses interviews conducted at the first three demonstration sites.