More than 170 delegates gathered on April 28-29, 2015 to listen to regulators, operators and business leaders discuss ways to collectively enhance safety within the industrial rail community.
The inaugural Industrial Railway Conference, which took place in Fort Saskatchewan, Canada—part of Alberta’s growing Industrial Heartland region—featured Captain Richard Phillips as a keynote speaker. Phillips discussed his ordeal with pirates off the coast of Africa, and the essential part that safety and complying with pre-determined procedures played in saving his ship and the lives of his crew.
“The industrial railway community is not new but it is a growing and important part of our industry as shippers have become rail operators behind the plant gate,” said Shawn I. Smith, who represented the three co-founders of the conference—Canadian Heartland Training Railway Services, Northern Plains Rail Services and Dominion Railway Services.
“We were fortunate to bring together an excellent cross-section of operators and attendees from across Canada and the US who spoke of the benefits of technical training, regulatory compliance and creating a comprehensive safety management system for any size of rail operation. In addition, the delegates seemed pleased with the sharing of practical knowledge from our speakers, who brought their years of expertise, along with a demonstrated passion for rail safety. Overall, we were pleased that participants provided the feedback that the learning from our event would result in improvements to their own safety culture,” Smith added.