Fatigue Risk Assessment
The Fatigue Risk Assessment (FRA) is a data collection process and policy review used to identify the fatigue risks for your staff. Essentially a FRA will clarify the current state of fatigue management in your organization, allow you to better understand how fatigue is impacting your staff, and identify fatigue risks that need to be addressed.
A FRA is also the first step in developing a feedback loop for evaluation, modification and continuous improvement of your fatigue management plan. By collecting key performance indicators (such as overtime levels, errors, incidents, accidents, etc.) during your FRA, you can use that data as a benchmark to compare and evaluate the effectiveness of your fatigue management plan going forward.
An FRA can use the CIRCADIAN® Alertness Simulator (CAS), an innovative, industry-leading software system to identify and manage fatigue risk. Developed through a decade of research and data collected from over 10,000 recorded 24-hour days from shiftwork and transportation employees, a FRA can rapidly analyze fatigue risk from the duty-rest or payroll data for any number of employees.
This is how CIRCADIAN can help you:
This analysis allows operation managers to develop an effective plan for minimizing fatigue risk. For example, a FRA analysis of one passenger rail operation found significant fatigue levels among certain groups of junior employees. Likewise, a FRA analysis of a commuter rail system identified significant fatigue problems among those working split shifts. As a result of this analysis, both companies were able to target specific measures to reduce fatigue among these populations. A post-program analysis demonstrated the success of these efforts. The FRA can help you:
- Identify the groups of employees who are most at risk for having fatigue related accidents
- Develop fatigue management approaches that are customized to address the specific needs of the operation
- Provide a benchmark of fatigue at your operation compared with others in your industry
- Measure the impact of work scheduling or rostering interventions in a particular operation
- Provide an ongoing method for making managers and supervisors accountable for fatigue risk management
- Provide documentation to safety inspectors and government regulators about the effectiveness of fatigue management initiatives
- Set industry standards for safety compliance.
