Vegetation management is both a safety-critical and performance-critical activity for the railway. If it is not managed effectively, it could affect the safe and reliable operation of the railway by obscuring signals and lineside signs, reducing safe clearances, preventing inspection of other assets, affecting drainage and earthworks, and increasing the likelihood of disruptions.
ORR has published a Targeted Assurance Review of Network Rail’s vegetation workbank planning and change control management. The review looks at the system Network Rail uses to plan, deliver, monitor, change and learn from vegetation management activity.
Our review recognises that Network Rail has taken steps to strengthen aspects of vegetation management. These include improvements in inspection practices, technical standards, condition visibility and the adoption of monitoring technology. The review also identified examples of good or improving practice in some regions and routes. However, we found that vegetation is not yet being managed through a fully integrated asset management system. Planning, delivery, assurance and change control operate through multiple locally optimised arrangements that are not consistently joined up. This means Network Rail cannot always demonstrate a clear line of sight between the money spent, the work delivered, and the safety, performance and resilience outcomes vegetation management is intended to achieve.
The review identified nine key enablers of changes to support Network Rail in enhancing its asset management system and makes four targeted recommendations. These recommendations require Network Rail to strengthen route-based vegetation management strategies, improve governance of changes to vegetation workbanks, provide more coherent maintenance reporting, and review national vegetation performance measures so they support assurance, learning and continuous improvement.