5. Health Risk Management (For Staff with Safety-Critical Positions)

Thissafety-critical chapter provides practical guidance to assist rail Organizations in performing health risk assessments for staff with safety-critical positions. For all health assessment decisions, a risk management approach forms the basis to ensure that the type of health assessment matches the risks associated with different work related to safety. The health risk management process aims to: • identify what could go wrong in the case of physical or psychological ill-health; • assess the consequences, and; • establish appropriate controls for the risks associated with ill-health. Following will be presented in this chapter: • presentation of work critical to safety; • an overview of the risk categories and related health assessment provisions; • a step-by-step guide to the risk assessment of tasks critical to safety and the health attributes needed for the tasks; • guidance for identifying health assessment requirements for specific tasks, such as colour vision. Work related to safety may also have specific occupational health and safety risks associated with it, for example, noise or manual handling. These are outside the scope of this Chapter and should be managed as required by relevant occupational health and safety regulations.