A new era in workplace safety has dawned with the release of ISO 45001, the international standard for occupational health and safety designed to help organizations across industry reduce injuries and illness around the world.

At BNSF Railway, that vision is workplace with zero injuries and the leader driving it is Brant Ring. Brant is the vice president of unit operations for BNSF Railway—the largest intermodal railway in the US, with over 32,500 route miles and thousands of workers. In this interview, Brant explains why BNSF Railway partnered with DEKRA to eliminate exposure and ensure safe performance every day.

The science is indisputable. All three types of fatigue, whether physical (body), mental (mind), or neurocognitive (brain), impair human performance. The most insidious and dangerous form in workplaces is neurocognitive fatigue, which is caused by insufficient Delta-wave or deep, restorative sleep that the human brain requires every 24 hours. The particular parts of the brain that suffer from this type of fatigue are the four lobes of the cerebral cortex—the parts of our brain that control cognitive processes such as pattern recognition, auditory discrimination, visual processing, memory, speech, reasoning, planning ahead, problem solving, and decision making.

How do you get better at safety? Especially in 2020 where in-person learning was practically impossible? In our experience, the answer depends on where your organization is on its safety journey. For some, there’s a need to develop safety leadership skills in supervisors. For others, the solution is broader exposure control, targeted risk management, remote learning or serious injury prevention. Still, others need a combination of all the above.