Situational Awareness Training and Roadway Worker Protection Training

RailPros Training Division (RWT) provides RWP Training for Contractors for several railroads, including Kansas City Southern. The KCS Contractor Training is designed to be both instructor-led and online. It was important to KCS to take the critical and complicated regulations that make up 49 CFR 214 subpart C and deliver the information in a way that is engaging, understandable and master-able – even for contractors with no railroad experience. To that end, the KCS RWP training makes heavy use of video, illustrations, and animations to teach contractors of all experience-levels how to stay protected and safe while on railroad property. RWT also worked with KCS’ Assistant VP of Health & Safety to introduce a new behavior-based safety campaign for employees to address Situational (Attentional) Awareness. The campaign teaches employees the indicators that signal a loss of awareness and what to do if and when you recognize these signs in yourself or others. RWT believes strongly in our training, but we also believe in helping our customers solve problems. That approach gives us the freedom to acknowledge that training is just one component of a company’s safety culture. While much of our training is regulatory, we also like to work with customers to identify and address the CAUSE of safety failures, not just cope with the symptoms. In this way, we are able to determine the best solutions. And, when solutions help eliminate root causes (key factors) – such as process, systems, communication or training failures – then railroaders are more likely to choose safe work behaviors. In both of these KCS training examples, RWT worked with our customers to identify the precise goals of each program and develop the best approach to achieve those goals and help KCS ensure compliance and safety at their company.