I have recently started a new job as a safety manager working for a brickwork and scaffolding sub contractor, who are pitching to work on rail projects, and the first thing to land on my desk is this achilles link up audit, which I have absolutely no previous experience with. There are a multitude of rail standards referred to which I cannot seem to obtain online and I have no idea whether we meet the standard or not. Unfortunately though, after 3 days in the job, my director wants to know if the company has a reasonable chance of passing the audit. We have a good policy, the guys on site are all CSCS card holders and we do the construction competence stuff to a good level I would say (from the very little I have seen so far), however I have no idea if this will equate to a successful link-up audit. Are there any users of this forum who may be able to offer guidance on trying to penetrate this rail-speak for a humble construction safety guy? I would be eternally grateful if so.

I'm unsure whether our systems meet the requirements specified in the Network rail standards, and until I get a response back from the people who hold the key to the standards, I'm not going to either. I guess, what I'm asking, is how stringent this particular audit will be and what type of standard are they looking for? We are not 18001 certified, however we did pass achilles building confidence in March 2011 and have CHAS and a few other of the tickets you'd expect. Are they expecting us to be drug testing our employees, have a competence management system in place and do medicals? We're a reasonably small company and don't do these things currently.

No No No No No You can see my predicament here.

Hi Zeb Not an expert, but have had experience of these audits. When you say audit do you mean core audit and then industry sector specific questions ? If you did then the core audit can be downloaded and also the specific questions you will be asked (some of which may even be relevant). Someone somewhere in your organisation would have had to answer a lot of questions to get as far as the audit. Including work you (your company) has undertaken and which categories you are applying for, tonnes of accounts questions, insurances etc. Getting this info would be a good start. The above links are good, but not all rail standards are available for free, some you have to buy, there is a catalog listing them all, but sadly I no longer remember what it is called. You may not need your own PICOW, but would likely require PTS training and medicals and policy for drug testing, working time & overtime (there are limits when working on rail jobs) When is your audit ?

Are you sure you need a procedure for control of bribery, would that be to make sure any backhanders go to the right person? Sorry could not resist. It was a few years ago for me (I have done my best to forget the experience). I seem to recall we had a policy and got all the relevant people to sign up to it amongst other things. I think, but happy to be corrected that the competence management were roles like PICOW etc but as I said you may not have / need these if you are working for a principle contractor as they will provide these. We didn't have these and only worked in rail closures and didn't need these ourselves, I did create a document for the competency our site supervisor required, though not one of the defined roles for network rail ( so I could write what I thought was appropriate). Failing one of these audits is not good, I think they email others in the scheme ( that you may work for) and state you have failed. Not cheap either. So in the proof audit I'm sure one of the questions is who is the H&S person with rail experience (So is that you ?). You have of course rail experience and you have or are working towards a NEBOSH Dip ? I think you have your work cut out for you, that is why I asked when the audit was. Anyway best of luck let us know how it goes.

Yes - its a requirement of Link Up now - also Environmental axpertise [but this can be 'got around']

Hi Zeb, Just a few words based on my experience of Link Up and being rail qualified through audit. If you are a supplier to a regular client who is Link Up approved they could sponsor your personnel through their registration. They would have to book your PTS training and administer the paperwork /issue of rule books etc. You would have to guarantee them you wouldn’t go off on your own and work on rail contracts outside their control as they could be liable for your mistakes. If you become Link Up approved yourself and have selected auditable codes, as Alan has said you will be audited annually. They currently charge us £2.5k p.a. With regard to drugs & alcohol. Part of rail qualification is a published drugs & alcohol policy. You will have to have 5% of your PTS qualified personnel tested every year by a Link Up approved supplier. For rail work, when qualified, you will also have to retain a Link Up approved supplier to provide For-Cause drugs & alcohol testing. We currently pay £500 p.a. and would have to pay £175 per sample if you ever needed to use the service. No need in 7 years qualified thankfully. Examples of medica;/ drugs testing suppliers are Express Medicals or Healthcare Connections. More can be found on the Achilles website. Before anyone attends PTS training, the intended sponsor has to review a person’s history on the NCCA Sentinel database. If they have failed a drugs or alcohol test previously- this must be registered, they can’t attend training for at least 5 years. Other reasons for not permitting sponsorship also exist. Personnel to be PTS trained must attend a pre-employment medical & pre-employment D&A test if it the first training event they are attending (that just means pre-training not on offer of employment) Medicals are time limited dependent on age at testing and require renewing. Drugs are open ended, repeated if they come up as a random. We do drugs every time we do a medical as a company policy rather than being a Link Up policy. Medicals are around £70, Drugs £65. Network Rail standards must be purchased, available from IHS (formerly Technical Index). Prices average £40 each. We have a library of approximately 40 standards and update about 8 every year. No photocopying – copyrighted documents! To keep aware of updates to standards you will need to subscribe to the IHS(formerly Technical Index) Network Rail quarterly catalogue. £160 p.a. There is a rumour going round this will be put on line free of charge in the future. Overtime and shift management is strictly controlled, there is no rocking up for a 18 hour shift after driving overnight. It’s tightly controlled but just takes a bit of administration work. Shift patterns, breaks also have to be monitored. The staff at Link Up and NCCA Sentinel are superb, they go the extra mile and the auditors do all they can to help you during the audits. Hope this helps. PM me if I can assist further.