Case Study: Southern Rail achieves streamlined safety reporting and audit efficiency with Ideagen Q-Pulse

Southern Rail Eliminate Duplication of Effort to Improve Safety Management

Southern Rail, which runs 2,200 daily services and 165 million passenger journeys a year across 158 stations in the South of England, faced fragmented, paper-based safety processes. Frontline staff faxed incident forms that were re-keyed into a database, investigations routinely missed the 28‑day target and about 50% of investigation work fell outside required timescales, while audit finding recording and action tracking were inadequate.

By implementing Q-Pulse, Southern centralized electronic reporting, automated notifications, evidence uploads and end-to-end tracking plus a web-based audit and corrective/preventive action module. The change eliminated duplicate data entry, sped up reporting and investigations, provided instant trend analysis and visibility (allowing resourcing gaps to be identified within two months), improved audit efficiency and replaced a manual Access system—freeing teams to focus on investigation quality and risk reduction.

Southern Rail

Alan Brownings

Head of Safety, Specifications and Assurance