MANAGING RISKS ON THE ROAD NETWORK NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA LEADING INNOVATION IN MANAGING RISKS FOR ROAD USERS

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1 MANAGING RISKS ON THE ROAD NETWORK NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA LEADING INNOVATION IN MANAGING RISKS FOR ROAD USERS Brett Gliddon Highway Manager Auckland & Northland Highways and Network Operations, NZ Transport Agency Auckland, New Zealand Abstract Rita Excell Regional Manager South Australia, ARRB Group Ltd Adelaide, Australia The identification and management of risk is one of the key functions for all professionals involved in public works. This paper discusses how the innovative approach to managing risk on the road network in Australia and New Zealand is influencing world s best practice in risk management. Brett Gliddon is a member of the World Road Association (formerly PIARC) Technical Committee TC1.5 Risk Management and in this capacity he is sharing NZ Transport Agency s approach to managing risks, to develop a tool box of risk management techniques that will be incorporated into a web-based risk management manual. Rita Excell is the Project Manager for ARRB Group leading two major projects for Austroads. The Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM) builds on programs such as AusRAP, KiwiRAP and irap. The second project is the implementation of ISO Road traffic safety (RTS) management systems. The paper looks at the role of road traffic safety management systems to enhance how safety is managed by road transport agencies with a focus on how alignment with ISO can be achieved. Key Words World Road Association, PIARC, NZTA, ANRAM, ARRB, Austroads, risk management, road traffic safety management systems, ISO 39001, National Road Safety Partnership Program. Introduction The World Road Association is an international road organisation with 118 member governments and some 2,500 road experts. Both Australia and New Zealand are full country members. One of the main objectives of the World Road Association is to identify exemplars of good governance and road administration in the management of risk and to share that knowledge with member organisations globally. Australasian participants on the various World Road Association committees are nominated by Austroads. Austroads is the association of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies. Austroads purpose is to improve Australian and New Zealand transport outcomes by improving the practices and capability of road agencies. This paper explores the way that Australia s and New Zealand s innovative approach to risk management is influencing international practice, through both our representation on the World Road Association s Risk Management Committees and through the research undertaken by ARRB Group, on behalf of Austroads, in developing the Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM).

2 The paper also recognises that Australian and New Zealand road agencies have much to gain from developing safety management systems for road safety, similar to those that already exist to manage risks to workers (work health and safety) and critical infrastructure such as rail safety. Identification of Risk NZTA s definition of risk is The effect of uncertainty on achieving objectives. The nature of the uncertainty is such that there could be a threat to achieving objectives, or there may be an unrealised opportunity to achieve objectives more efficiently or effectively. To manage risk, organiations including road agencies generally follow the AS/NZS ISO Risk Management Principles and Guidelines. Policies and documentation to support these policies are prepared and in most cases imbedded into practices within the organisations. The hierarchy of control, which has been adopted widely in the management of risk for work health and safety is also a very common approach to managing organisational risks. However, identifying risks particularly in wellestablished processes and practices is much more challenging. The extent of decisions made to mitigate risks, in particular those that would have a catastrophic outcome, but a low likelihood, is only really understood when something does go wrong. A case in point is the recent response to the crashes involving commercial airlines. Decisions by airlines to manage a risk, based probably on the assumption that the risk was minor, compared to the financial or other implications of eliminating the risk, have had a high cost to the airlines involved. These recent experiences of MH 17 flying over a dangerous zone, and German Wings not having a two person policy in the cockpit, highlights the need to rethink the true implications of risk mitigation decisions, in particular when there is a likely impact on human life. To some extent the way that the risk of crashes was managed in the last century was reflective of this philosophy. Even more of a concern was that the risk assessment employed assumed users of the systems would never make a mistake. The response to any mistakes by users was to apportion all responsibility to the user, rather than the failure of the design to protect them from serious injury or death. This was out of step with the work health and safety rules that was seeing the introduction to design improvements to machinery to restrict injury from errors made by operators. In the 21 st Century this has changed with the acceptance of the Safe System philosophy and the realisation that road users make mistakes and that the consequence of these mistakes should not lead to death or serious injury. In the project management space we saw the way that risks were managed evolve in the late 1980 s when quality assurance processes were introduced. The Challenger Shuttle disaster clear evidence of ineffective quality processes and systems in place. Quality systems brought with them the comprehensive documentation of decisions and the introduction of systems and standard procedures transformed the way major projects were and are administered. Figure 1 illustrates an example of the typical steps in the risk management process. Figure 1 NZTA Risk Management Process (Source NZTA) The increased awareness of the need to better understand the inherent risks in existing practices and also not accepting

3 unnecessary risks in new processes has led to research focussed on delivering tools and processes that can be relied on to assist in both identifying and effectively prioritising the management of risks. Through Austroads and the World Roads Association, Australian and New Zealand road agencies are able to contribute our experiences in management of risk, successes and failures, to enhance international best practice in a risk based approach to managing critical infrastructure. Managing Project Risk NZTA uses a three-tiered approach to managing project risks as follows: Road Project. The approach and case study was then included in the international report to member organisations, where this approach can be adopted and implemented by other agencies. The steps that make up the general approach are as follows: 1. Prepare risk register 2. Prepare consequence/outcome matrix 3. Identify probability of risk being realised 4. Assign a risk score. 5. Evaluate the risk and management strategy. Figure 3 illustrates how various risk levels are treated. Informal - applied where a formal risk management process is not necessary general (semi quantitative) advanced (quantitative) Figure 2 illustrates when each approach is used. Figure 3 Risk Categories (Source NZTA) Figure 2 Risk Approach Selection Matrix (Source NZTA) As is evident from Figure 2 the General approach is undertaken for most projects up to the value of $20 million. Advanced Approach The advanced approach to risk management follows the general approach; however, a full quantitative analysis using modelling tools is undertaken. In 2013 the advanced approach was presented to the World Road Association TC 1.5 meeting and was recognised for its innovative approach to identifying and managing risks on the Tauranga Eastern Link The treatment strategy employed seeks to treat the risk as the first step. Two options are available to treat the risk, either by reducing the factors that contribute to the current probability or the consequences. The next step in the strategy is to understand whether the risk can be tolerated, that is if the likelihood and/or the consequence are low then an option is to live with it. Once a decision has been made to accept the risk the next option is to explore sharing the risk with another party insuring against the risk through a contractual arrangement or the introduction of some type of insurance to manage the consequence of the risk to the organisation. The final option is to remove the activity with which the risk is associated. This action is taken when the other three options are deemed to be unlikely to effectively address

4 the risk, or where the act of removing the activity which the risk is associated with, does not have a material outcome on the success of the project. Managing Risk on the Road Network At the 2013 IPWEA International Conference held in Darwin, a paper was presented by Excell titled Road Safety and Asset Management. This paper introduced the Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM), published by Austroads in 2012, and outlined how road agencies could integrate asset data, already collected by road agencies, in the model. Since this presentation ANRAM has been undergoing further refinements to its algorithms and risk models to achieve closer alignment between the risk posed by infrastructure and the likelihood of these risks being realised. ANRAM builds on the extensive research underpinning risk-based road assessment programs such as KiwiRAP, AusRAP and irap, whose primary focus is to highlight the inherent risk on the road network from the standard of road infrastructure. Austroads members commissioned ARRB Group to develop and then further refine ANRAM, because they recognised that they needed a better way to understand and manage the risks on the road network. The traditional blackspot reactive approach, which relies on crashes occurring was contrary to both the Safe System philosophy, already entrenched in national and state road safety strategies, together with their other risk management policies, such as work health and safety and project management methods, which rely on the proactive identification of risks and prioritisation of management of risk. In 2014, the review of the National Road Safety Strategy and subsequent Action Plan for included the following implementation objective to address Action 1 Prioritise and treat high-risk rural and urban roads. Apply spatial analysis (e.g. severe injury rate/cost heat maps, Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM) analysis) to identify and prioritise sections of rural corridors and urban locations with high collective risk (fatal/serious injury crashes) While there is a growing trend to align more closely to the zero tolerance approach to road crashes, limited budgets and extensive road networks require that there is still a need to maintain both a reactive and proactive approach. ANRAM also now allows road managers the opportunities to integrate these approaches so that more informed decisions can be made on how to prioritise limited investment funds on the vast road network. Figure 4 illustrates how the risk assessment approach is applicable for low-volume networks (which are likely to have fewer and scattered crashes) through to higher-volume networks. Figure 4 Application of Risk Approach based on Traffic For roads with a very high crash incidence, the risk assessment approach is not so necessary, and traditional crash investigation techniques are appropriate. ANRAM continues to evolve and be refined to meet the needs of road agencies. In 2015 we expect ANRAM to have improved models to deal with rear-end and pedestrian crash risk as well as moving to an online format. Other enhancements being undertaken and likely to be available in 2016 include a correlation between asset data already collected by road

5 agencies and the attributes required to derive the risk profile of the network. The project is also exploring how real- time traffic speed information can be integrated into the model to further refine the risk profile, which is very heavily influenced by travel speeds of vehicles. Safety Management Systems Safety management systems (SMS) are an integral aspect of how the safest modes of transport, namely rail, maritime and aviation are managed and improved. ISO 39001:2012 Road traffic safety (RTS) management systems: requirements with guidance for use sets the benchmark for SMS and reinforces the case for the adoption of formal resultsfocussed SMS in agencies responsible for the safe movement of users on their road networks. Earlier sections of this paper have described specialised tools and frameworks that have been developed to assist agencies to identify and manage risks, both project and road safety. However, it is notable that these tools are specialist tools employed almost independently of one another and they do not appear to belong to part of an overarching SMS. As our agencies get larger and more diverse in the tasks they are required to manage, it is becoming increasingly more critical to have an SMS in place to monitor, measure and reduce the risks of running our transport network. The safety of the operation of our road network is akin to that of large commercial road transport operators. We expect these organisations to have significant safety management systems in place to ensure the safety of their own workers and that of the public that travels alongside them. The National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP) launched in Australia in May 2014 and administered by ARRB, is an example of how commercial organisations are demonstrating their commitment to the management of safety and also sharing their successes with other likeminded companies through a formal network. The NRSPP website acknowledges that industry leaders have recognised the need to be proactive in the management of risk, both for reputational gain as well as commercial advantage realised from decreased operating costs, customer loyalty and an overall reduction in corporate risk. Austroads recognised that there was a need to assist members to understand the benefits to be realised from the implementation of SMS in accordance with ISO and commissioned a project to assist with the implementation of the standard. This project is scheduled for completion in mid-2015 and will include a Starters Guide to Safety Management Systems for Road Agencies. The project also includes the findings of a survey, undertaken to establish a benchmark of the understanding and awareness of road SMS in Australian and New Zealand road agencies. The results suggest that there is still much work to be done to increase the understanding of SMS as they apply to road safety. Conclusions The paper demonstrates the significant innovation in the Australasian approach to risk management, in both the project management and road safety disciplines. Opportunities provided through membership of Austroads allow Australian and New Zealand road agency staff to be exposed and contribute to world-leading research in risk management. While progress has been significant in the way that we address risk in road agencies, the lack of overarching safety management systems that integrate all risk management processes still requires some attention. References ARRB Group 2014, National road safety partnership program, website, ARRB Group, Vermont South, Vic, viewed 30 March 2015, International Standards Organisation 2012, Road traffic safety (RTS) management

6 systems: requirements with guidance for use, ISO 39001:2012, ISO, Geneva, Switzerland. Austroads, 2012 Australian National Risk Assessment Model, Austroads, Sydney, NSW.

7 Author Biographies Brett Gliddon Brett Gliddon has been with the New Zealand Transport Agency for the past 15 years. In this time he has worked in the Highway and Network Operations Division responsible for the maintenance, operation and improvement of the State Highway Network in New Zealand. Brett is a qualified Civil Engineer and has been involved in the development of some of New Zealand s largest roading projects including the $70M Grafton Gully motorway upgrade project, the $200M Northern Busway project, the $360M Northern Gateway Toll Road project and the $1.3B Puhoi to Wellsford Road of National Significance. Brett is currently the Highway Manager for Auckland/Northland and is responsible for the operations, maintenance and construction of all State Highways across the Auckland/Northland regions of New Zealand. Brett.Gliddon@nzta.govt.nz. Address: Level 11, HBSC House, 1 Queen Street, Auckland 1143, New Zealand. Rita Excell Rita is the Regional Manager for ARRB Group in South Australia. Since joining ARRB in 2010, Rita has worked on major research projects associated with public transport, innovative road safety treatments and transport policy. She is a qualified Civil Engineer with over 20 years experience including working in local government across a range of disciplines including traffic and transport planning and stormwater management. Rita s primary focus is to assist road agencies to effectively deliver the safe and efficient operation of the road network by understanding how to effectively translate research into practice. rita.excell@arrb.com.au Address: Level 7, Suite 713, 147 Pirie Street Adelaide South Australia.