The role of communication failures in engineering work

This paper outlines the research undertaken to further the understanding of communication failures during engineering work on the railways. It provides an overview of three, complementary pieces of research that examine rail communications and their processes from difference perspectives. These are a root cause analysis tool, a content analysis and an examination of the critical failure points within the rule book. The findings of these are then placed in context of the implications for the industry and how they can be implemented to improve safety communications.