When is an ICP needed?
When a railway introduces new or altered rolling stock or infrastructure the duty holder needs to ensure that health and safety considerations are incorporated into the design processes.
If the risks arising from the project are new or significantly different from existing risks, the dutyholder must appoint an ‘independent competent person’ (ICP) to help them devise a written scheme of safety verification for the project or works assessed against a set of criteria.
The ICP should be appointed early in the design process to help the dutyholder select the appropriate assessment criteria. The role of the ICP is not to provide ‘sign-off’ that a project is ‘safe’. They are there to help the dutyholder to go through the right processes.
Read more from the ORR website.
How will HRSS help?
The Heritage Railway Safety Service will cultivate a network of Independent Competent Persons and organisations to assist railways in meeting this obligation. This will include both those working for HRSS, for themselves or other for organisations.
The ICP does not have to be external, but they do have to be independent of the project. In most heritage railways’ cases internal staff are giving their input to the project so lose their independence.
What an ICP is not
For the avoidance of doubt, an ICP does not carry out competence assessments or ‘sign off’ people as ‘competent’ or infrastructure as ‘fit’.
See more HRSS services.