THE FATIGUE RISK INDEX
A Shift worker model with particular applications in maintenance engineers and other ground crew in aviation; locomotive drivers and track-side workers in rail industry. FRI Has applications in other shift worker roles in health, emergency services, power generation and other general industrial contexts.
During 1999, UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) commissioned QinetiQ Limited at Farnborough, England, to create firstly a Fatigue Index and then some years later in 2006, adding a Risk module to it, the project team delivered the Fatigue Risk Index.The team that designed and delivered the project included the scientists who now form FRMSc Limited.
HSE has oversight for safety in the UK workplace and wanted a tool that could be used by UK industry to predict high fatigue levels for shift workers. FRI fitted the requirement and was made available to UK industry hosted within a a simple spreadsheet with consequentially limited usability and functionality.
FRMSc has a license to develop and market the algorithms. The algorithms are now hosted within the powerful SAFE predictive fatigue model hosting platform used within the aviation industry. FRI is now available alongside the SAFE model for commercial airline pilots and the CARE model for cabin crew. This integration provides airline clients with a comprehensive portfolio of models that share the same display design and powerful hosting platform. For other industries, integrating FRI within the SAFE hosting platform makes FRI a lot more powerful and a lot more usable than with previous versions hosted solely within an Excel Spread sheet.
The SAFE hosting platform is built on the Microsoft Azure Cloud and has good scalability for large file analysis coupled with very strong security and resilience. More, as it is a centralised system, clients will be upgraded automatically and the license fees charged for access by FRMSc include all maintenance and upgrades.
A further benefit is that an API is available for clients to use enabling them to drive data directly into the model from their employee roster management suites without having to download and upload data. This provides large scale connectivity for automatic analysis of employee schedules in real time.
Another benefit is the addition of a powerful Analytics Package that managers can use to explore where fatigue is likely within the schedules they construct and report on it.
The integration of FRI into the SAFE hosting platform permits clients to drive more than 1,000,000 duties at a time into FRI which is far beyond the capability of the original spreadsheet-based model.
The team that created FRI are still involved from within FRMSc and are consequently uniquely able to support FRI with upgrades and other developments. A recent independent report commissioned by Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) to review fatigue models indicated that whilst all similar models had their strengths and weaknesses, FRI was the most consistent and gave the best overall performance.
Showing the fatigue and the risk displays
FRI is extensively used in the rail industry as well as in health, emergency services and nuclear power. It is being used increasingly for maintenance engineers, dispatchers and other ground crew in aviation though the high performance SAFE hosting platform.