Safety first

The Airport Express Train (Flytoget) carries travellers to Oslo Airport Gardermoen emphasising safety, punctuality and service.

They use Synergi® to track all accidents and deviations. Safety Advisor Odd Lynnebakken uses the incident management system from Synergi Solutions on a daily basis, analysing data in order to improve safety measures and routines in the organisation.

“We have used Synergi since the foundation of the company in 1998. It is a fantastic tool with a high degree of user-friendliness. It is easy to extract the exact data you need,” explains Lynnebakken.

Safety comes first and all managers have access to selected Key Performance Indicators extracted from Synergi.

“We have made a dash board with important safety statistics available on the intranet to all managers in the organisation. This way, all decision makers have easy access to the latest vital safety information at all times,” says Lynnebakken.

When asked how many of the employees in the organisation work with safety aspects, Lynnebakken promptly replies: “We all work with safety.” The organisation’s mantra is “Safety, punctuality and service”. “And in that order,” emphasises the Safety Advisor.

“If a situation occurs that is out of the ordinary, all train personnel is trained to think safety first upon making a decision on what to do,” explains Lynnebakken.

Data from the incident management system is also used directly in the annual mandatory safety training programmes.

“This gives the employees a healthy feeling of ownership and responsibility because the situations we discuss or rehearse are based on real occurrences reported by themselves,“ says Lynnebakken.

Incidents reported in the system also pertain to employee safety and thus contribute to the HQS efforts in the organisation. In 2003, there were many reports on back injuries and other small injuries among the train personnel. As a consequence, instructions on how to lift heavy luggage has since become part of the basic training of all train hosts, and the incident curve had deflated.

The most important advantage with a professional incident management system is the fact that it is a catalyst for increased efficiency and quicker decision-making. Having incidences well documented makes it easier to achieve results in the safety work, claims Lynnebakken.

“If reports start coming in on people being in the train tracks, all in the same location, I can make a pretty good guess that the problem is a hole in a fence. I report this to the National Rail Administration backed by reports from the incident management program and action can be taken without further investigation,” Lynnebakken concludes.

The Norwegian National Rail Administration and the Norwegian State Railways also use Synergi, making it easy to transfer reports and compare statistics that generate a realistic picture of the problem or situation at hand.


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