Undergoing an Independent Safety Assessment (ISA) provides managers with confidence that their projects are meeting recognized (rail) industry, legal and regulatory standards.

It also demonstrates that a business is committed to operating in a safe, sustainable and efficient manner, sending a reassuring message of transparency to passengers, regulators, investors and employees.

A rail industry first

In 2016 we become the first independent assurance provider in the rail market to offer a UKAS accredited Independent Safety Assessment service.

Under this scheme, our ISA processes and structures were assessed against BS EN ISO/IEC 17020 Type A, underlining our commitment to the highest levels of competence, independence and consistency.

ISA gives stakeholders the confidence that a product, system, or railway application meets recognised industry and regulatory safety standards

The rail team at Ricardo has been providing ISA services for over 18 years, working on small, medium and large projects around the world.

We have worked on changes to complex products, overseen updates to existing systems, and supported complete new railways from initial design to commission.

The service typically applies the requirements of the CENELEC EN50126 and EN50129 standards as the basic criteria against which the safety engineering of railway products and systems are assessed, since these define a systems and safety engineering lifecycle and the contents of safety cases for railway safety systems.

These standards call up a range of other relevant standards such as CENELEC EN50128 and EN50657 for software, CENELEC EN50121 for EMC, and CENELEC EN50159 for communications. However ISA work can be performed against other relevant standards such as IEC 61508, and to standards directly relevant to electrical, mechanical systems and civils structures for specific products and railway sub-systems.