Safety

At the heart of everything we do.

At HDO, safety is paramount.

The safety of all people and materials, of our infrastructure's operations, the safety of our employees and safety in our partnerships.


Our industry is incredibly complex; our approach to safety can’t be. "Everyone Home Safe Every Day" is HDO’s safety promise: simple and all-encompassing.

Our approach is not simply reactive. We measure our performance to target improvement, but we attribute at least as much focus on the precursors to accidents.

Day to day, we have in depth reporting systems for unsafe conditions or acts which could have resulted in an incident or accident. Through careful analysis guiding early intervention, we are able to prevent accidents before they occur.

We work very closely with a number of partners and agencies across the industry, who regulate and hold us to account on safety performance and collaborate with us to keep the railway safe.

Risk averse

Risk awareness forms the foundation of our safety culture. All our staff are encouraged to recognise, identify and act to reduce risk – and not just those on the front line. Accident prevention is the duty of every employee, on any position.

Our industry is constantly changing and evolving and therefore so are the risks. We’re continually, monitoring, learning and innovating in our approach to reduce risk across the global network, always asking the question of every situation:

Could this be safer?