As our first early adopter and pilot customers have started using RISC, I’ve been asked a lot of great questions about how it works, what’s the rationale behind it, and how people use it day to day. Now that we’re rolling RISC out to more agencies, I’ve pulled together these questions into a Frequently Asked Questions post (that will also be featured on the new RISC product page) you can reference and share with colleagues.
And you can listen to my conversation with Tris Hussey on Inside Trapeze where I go into more detail on all of these topics.
RISC is all about bringing all your safety and incident data together in a single place and creating a living record of what happened and needs to happen next. When we started planning the RISC product, we thought the biggest challenge was creating an SMS (Safety Management System) plan, but what we found was it wasn’t the SMS that was the issue, it was the data.
Public transit is a safety-focused industry. We know safety is critical and we act like it. Putting a plan together saying “we manage risks” wasn’t the challenge, it was the “what’s next” that kept people up at night. It was knowing that a risks’ index is more than a gut feeling, that you could put your hands on the data to support that assessment, and that when remediation was needed—it got done. It was feeling confident that, if audited, you could prove you have a safety risk assurance process that works.
RISC was designed to document the data for and support the processes of an SMS as defined by the FTA. Our risk register aligns both with the language the FTA uses when talking about risk, as well as facilitates the tracking of leading indicators, lagging indicators, and mitigations. By using a common language RISC facilitates a better understand of risk assurance both within your agency, but also when collaborating with other agencies around the country. By providing the data associated with risks in real time, you can have peace of mind that your risk management and risk assurance processes are well documented.
Feature-for-feature, RISC is more robust than most solutions being used or marketed to public transit agencies today. It’s transit first and transit focused. Simply that. There are other solutions that track and manage safety data from other industries, but public transit is different. The regulatory frameworks, terminologies, and expectations are different. You can’t implement a generic safety data management solution and expect it to work well for public transit.
Trapeze knows transit. We’re transit people. We make sure we’re up to date with all the latest training and terminology from the FTA and for PTASP (Public Transit Agency Safety Plans). Out of the box, RISC will work with any agency in North America, and as you make RISC your own with your own processes, workflows, systems, and language, you realize Trapeze understands what you need to get your job done.
The impetus that kicked off the RISC initiative was to help agencies with PTASP requirements. An FTA audit shouldn’t mean weeks and weeks of preparation to pull your data together. You shouldn’t have to answer “I’ll get back to you with that data. It will be about a week” during an audit. With RISC you have live access to reports and data so you can say “Yes, here’s the data. On the screen you can see how we’ve improved since implementing your recommendations. Would you like a copy of this report emailed to you?”
And when it comes time to show how you’re meeting PTASP requirements, all the evidence is at your fingertips. You can demonstrate exactly how you’re implementing your SMS, how your key KPIs are tracking, and what you’re doing to improve safety at your agency.
All at your fingertips, no spreadsheets needed.
Making something complex easy to use is the biggest challenge for any product developer, but we think we’ve stuck the right balance of simplicity and configurability. We designed RISC as a web-native application. This means two things for you. One, it will look and work like any app you use online. If you use webmail, fill out forms online, or anything like that, you’ll feel right at home. Every app requires some training, but we’ve put our pilot customers’ feedback into the app so after some short orientation and training, you’ll be able to use RISC like a pro.
Two, Since RISC is web-native means it works anywhere you are. If your device can connect to the internet, you can use RISC. This goes beyond letting people work from home, it means accident investigators can record details about an incident in the field without needing to transcribe notes later back in the office. It means, customers can use RISC to submit safety issues they see, when they see them.
One of the most important benefits of RISC is it’s natively designed to connect to other systems. RISC is actually a system of different modules that integrate together with standard programming tools. This means RISC can connect to EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) or Workforce Management (WM) or MOD (Mobility on Demand) or any other system you need in the same way.
When RISC integrates with other systems, we make sure to identify the system-of-record for every data element to ensure each system’s data is respected. For example, RISC is the source of truth for a rollup of safety and incident data, but Workforce Management is where personnel data is kept. RISC will track if repairs are completed and when, but EAM tracks the details on everything that gets done.
Connections between RISC and other systems are live connections. RISC pulls the information it needs live and updates everything automatically.
If you’d like a demo of RISC, contact Product Manager Sabrina Blais at sabrina.blais@trapezegroup.com.
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