Evaluation of Scenario-Based Team Training for Railroad Transportation Employees
In 2015, a peer review team (PRT), comprised of labor craft employees and railroad managers, developed railroad scenario-based training (SBT). The PRT was responsible for reviewing close call reports and developing recommendations to address unsafe conditions on the railroad. The objective of SBT is to improve the coordination of teams to operate safely through exposure to the hazardous conditions that railroads previously identified through observations, close call reports, incident reports, and accidents that can lead to unsafe outcomes. The research evaluated the effectiveness of SBT to learn if the training is contributing to more effective learning of safety critical behaviors. Among the three railroads that were able to conduct training sessions, each demonstrated that SBT can lead to slight improvements in correct responses of student’s performance on training evaluation forms. While the differences in pre and post evaluation forms was not significantly different for experienced employees, new employees displayed just under 17 percent improvement which was statistically significant. This significant difference shows that SBT programs have the potential to teach new students about real-world scenarios that they might not otherwise have been able to learn during their standard training.