Rail Safety Week Day 2: Safer Pre-Site Access Planning

The Safety Imperative in Pre-Site Planning

Safe access to railway worksites is essential for protecting staff and ensuring smooth operations. Before any maintenance or inspection work begins, it’s crucial to understand the site including access points and safe walking routes, identify hazards, where the work is, and carefully plan every step of the operation, ensuring that everyone involved is prepared. Effective training is also essential, to ensure the team is confident to work safely.

Traditionally, pre-site planning has involved multiple physical site visits, each of which involves staff entering a high risk environment. Not only do these risks need to be mitigated but these multiple visits can be time-consuming, especially considering travel times, and resource-intensive.

How AIVR Enhances Pre-Site Site Safety and Familiarisation

AIVR (Automated Intelligent Video Review) is used by companies such as Story Plant, Siemens, VolkerRail and more for pre-site planning and training. AIVR enables teams to plan for site work safely and thoroughly, all from a remote location. By providing up-to-date footage and interactive tools, AIVR supports comprehensive virtual site surveys and collaborative learning by allowing planners to review access points, check for obstructions, and identify potential dangers and share this information with the site teams – all before anyone steps foot on site.

With AIVR, Teams can:

• Quickly Find & Review Access Points: Easily locate access points near the site of work and assess their suitability.
• Highlight Hazards & Key Information: Annotate footage with notes on direction of travel, site locations, and any obstructions or concerns for improved hazard identification.
• Check Safe Routes & Boundaries: Measure walking distances, safe cess boundaries, and positions of safety to ensure planned routes are accessible and compliant.
• Track Changes Over Time: Monitor recurring hazards such as vegetation growth, and review how site conditions evolve to support ongoing risk management.
• Share Visual Briefings & Reports: Export annotated videos, images, and reports for planning, training, and safety briefings – ensuring everyone is informed about site-specific risks and procedures.

Safety Benefits of Pre-Site Planning with AIVR

• Reduces exposure to hazards by enabling comprehensive remote planning and familiarisation.
• Improves hazard identification and workforce preparedness, ensuring everyone understands site-specific safety risks.
• Enables collaborative, visual safety briefings and knowledge sharing, building a strong, positive safety culture across an organisation.
• Increases efficiency by allowing more sites to be reviewed and planned in less time, freeing up resources for other safety-critical tasks.

AIVR has been used for Controller of Site Safety (COSS) and On-Track Plant (OTP) planning training, helping staff familarise themselves with the environment and hazards before attending site. Teams can review real-world scenarios, discuss best practices, and collaborate on planning – all in a safe environment.

“AIVR gives us 100% visibility from each site, whereas before we’d be lucky if we were to see 50% of the site.” Story Plant

“Great solution that has enabled early planning of work sites in a controlled space prior to going trackside. It has helped to boost safety and efficiency on our projects.” Construction Manager, Siemens

By enabling comprehensive remote planning and familiarisation, AIVR reduces unnecessary site visits and exposure to hazards, improves workforce preparedness, and supports collaborative, visual safety briefings. This approach not only increases efficiency, but also builds a more knowledgeable, better-prepared workforce – central to creating a safer railway for everyone.

Want to learn more or see AIVR in action? Get in touch!