Document

Author
Abigail Palmer & Nora Balfe
Abstract
Situation awareness in the railway is extremely important due to its dynamic nature which means that operators have to perceive, understand, and act on continuously changing information. This is true in engineering work, as well as operations. During engineering works, a PICOP (person in charge of possession) needs to keep track of multiple different factors, such as the number of RRVs/OTMs being used, number of worksites, points movements, and train movements, to ensure the safe running of the requiring high levels of situation awareness. Observations were undertaken to gain an understanding of the job as a whole in order to ultimately generate recommendations on how to better support situation awareness. This paper maps the PICOP role to Endsley’s three levels of situation awareness. Factors include track layouts, and the number of worksites