scope:

2.1 General

The policy supports the two top level crossing risk event bow ties:

• Animal,vehicle, object or person on the line at risk of collision; and

•Incident on or near level crossing not involving a railway vehicle.

The policy provides guiding principles which relate to all of the controls identified in the bow-ties and the level 2 Level Crossing Engineering risk ascaptured in the STE

EnterpriseRisk Register (ERR):

• Failure to deliver and implement an effective level crossing asset management framework leading to a serious safety incident, non-compliance

to legislation, prosecution and significant rise in programme costs.

The level crossing asset policy is aligned to and consistent withthe Network Rail 10-year level crossing safety strategy.

Practical examples of the application of the policy are provided in appendix A.

The policy applies to all employees and others engaged inactivities connected with any aspect of a level crossing asset life cycle.

The policy applies to the whole the level crossing estate. Itcovers passive, e.g.footpath and user worked level crossings and active, e.g.automatic and manually

controlled level crossings.

2.2 Responsibilities

The policy is applicable particularly to Route Level Crossing Managers and Route Asset Managers, Track, Signals, Electrical Power and posts in the route accountable

for lineside. It also applies to the equivalent posts in Network Rail Telecom.

The level crossing asset policy, its associated reference documents and policy application guide, see appendix A, should be referred to when preparing Route Business plans.

2.3 Line of sight to asset management core principles and Network Rail objectives

All assetmanagement interventions defined in this policy are aligned to the principlesdefined in the Network Rail asset management policy and to the objective

defined inthe Network Rail asset management strategy, see figure 1. They:

a) are based on minimising whole life, whole system costs;

b) are underpinned by appropriate facts from enhanced information;

c) define the most appropriate approach to asset maintenance inspection and renewal,supported by reliability, availability, maintainability and safety specifications;

d) define a risk-based approach to determining intervention requirements to specifylevels of reliability;

e) define resilience requirements to a specified range of weather conditions, takingaccount of emerging knowledge of climate change; and

f) define how sustainable development requirements are to be addressed.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to specify the asset policy for the whole of the Network Rail Level Crossing estate.

The Level Crossing asset policy seeks to optimise the performance, risk and cost of ownership of the Level Crossing estate across all of its life cycle stages from concept

to disposal to deliver minimum whole life cost.

The policy is structured around the six main subject areas and identified in theInstitute of Asset Management document 'Anatomy of Asset Management':

•strategy and planning;

• assetmanagement decision-making;

• lifecycle delivery;

• asset information;

•organisation and people; and

• riskand review.

The Institute of Asset Management guidance is recognised as best practice against which Network Rail is measured by the Office of Rail and Road, 'The Regulator'.