The railway as a socio-technical system: Human factors at the heart of successful rail engineering

High-quality engineering and operations management are key to meeting all the requirements of a successful railway-quality of service, reliable and safe performance, and maximum possible use of capacity. However, the railway is a socio-technical system and therefore has human factors at its core, which requires a strong integrated ergonomics contribution. Moreover, this contribution must be at a systems level rather than providing point solutions to particular equipment, interface, workplace, or job problems. This paper draws from the first two human factors projects in the EPSRC Rail Research UK programme, interpreting them for an engineering audience. The paper first emphasizes and gives examples of the need for a systems ergonomics contribution to engineering an improved railway. Then the available literature is summarized in a structured fashion. Finally, a short summary is provided of the research which has started to develop a distributed cognition model of work on the railways, especially across functional groups of signalling, control, and train driving.