Incident management at Dutch Railways

Currently, all the rail safety advisors from the 13 NS Reizigers production units use the Quality Online incident management system. The system is deployed for national recording of all incidents and accidents, with a view to produce a better ability to analyse them. Improvements which increase general safety can thus be introduced more rapidly. It is precisely the consistent recording of what may appear at first sight to be minor incidents, and getting to the bottom of them and dealing with them, which can reduce the number of disasters in future. 

All NS Reizigers employees who are on guard duty - several hundred in all - also have access to the system. They enter details involving incidents and accidents, after which these are handled by the rail safety advisors.

Recording and processing

Titia Los is a rail safety staff member and responsible for the implementation of the system: "We first ran a pilot to ensure that the Quality Online software met our expectations. The pilot was a success and we now use the system with complete satisfaction. What is most important for us is that we can use the Quality Online software not only to record, but also to monitor the processing. We will also soon be using it to record audits and inspections." 

Peer Reinhard, CEO of Quality Online, explains: "It's interesting to see how quickly an organisation like NS Reizigers familiarised itself with the system. This is particularly because of the method of implementation we use, in which we always sort out carefully with the client the way their process is currently constructed. The flexibility of our product also plays an important role." 

About Dutch Railways

Dutch Railways plays an important role in the Netherlands' mobility. The company's objectives are to transport passengers safely, on time and comfortably via attractive stations. Dutch Railways is the largest passenger carrier by rail in the Netherlands. The main objectives of its policy are: travelling on time, providing information and service, contributing to social safety, creating sufficient transportation capacity and ensuring clean trains and stations. Dutch Railways daily carries around 1 million passengers in the Netherlands. To do so, it has 2,800 carriages with 240,000 seats available. In the Netherlands Dutch Railways manages 371 stations. In the United Kingdom its sister company NedRailways operates two transportation concessions together with its British partner Serco: Mersey Rail around Liverpool and Northern Rail in the north of England. Almost 25,000 Dutch Railways employees provide service to the customers.   

The Dutch rail network is not in the hands of Dutch Railways. Management of the infrastructure (rails, signals, overhead cabling etc.) and the rail traffic network are the responsibility of ProRail. The Transport, Public Works and Water Management Inspectorate oversees rail safety in the Netherlands.