2019 HPRCT Conference

he Dutch railway sector consists of several Train Companies, but only one major Maintenance and Traffic control Company named ProRail. ProRail collaborates with a limited number of certified engineering companies and certified contractors, when it comes to the installation and maintenance of the Railway safety systems. ProRail realized at a certain point that, although each company was trying to enhance their own safety culture, the safety culture on a sectoral level was suffering from fragmentation, competitive obstacles, and a severe lack of sectoral learning. ProRail then decided to launch a three year, sector wide HRO program in order to accomplish a level 4 proactive safety culture on the sectoral level. Apollo13 was having a key facilitating and advisory role in this program. One of the key success factors of the approach was creating a change platform instead of a change program. In the change platform all relevant parties (ProRail, engineering companies and contractors) were represented; they were also owners of the program. Thus the program focused on ‘horizontal organizing’ and transformational change. The members of the Change platform decided which activities were to be launched an how to proceed. Key intervention domains were:

• enhancing collective learning ability
• improving communication and interaction ability
• strengthen change and development capacity
• enhance ability to act. It worked out into a very successful program.

In this breakout session we will inform you about the HRO intervention strategy we used, the specific factors which contributed to the success of the program, the several lessons learned and above all the typical ‘new’ struggles related to horizontal organizing.