Chemical Safety

London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway

By innovating using QR codes to access COSHH risk assessment data LNWR&WM Railway are achieving compliance whilst making big efficiency gains and reducing their impact on the environment.

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Case Study

September 18, 2025

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From paper to instant access: How London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway transformed COSHH management with EcoOnline

London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway operates across hundreds of sites, from busy depots to regional stations. Running services between Liverpool, Birmingham, and London Euston on the West Coast Main Line, LNWR&WM plays a vital role in connecting people and places across the UK. Together with West Midlands Railway, the operator runs more than 400,000 trains every year.

With such a broad and busy network, safety and reliability are at the heart of the organisation’s promise to customers. Every journey is monitored, every train is tracked, and behind the scenes a wide range of staff work tirelessly to keep services safe, clean, and on time. Every day, workers handle a wide range of substances, from routine cleaning chemicals to the strong solvents used to remove graffiti from trains. If a train has been vandalised, it can’t return to service until it’s cleaned, so safety, compliance, and efficiency are critical.

Managing chemical safety across such a vast and distributed workforce was a complex responsibility. With almost 700 active COSHH assessments in use, information had to be easy to access, accurate, and audit-ready. Traditionally, assessments were printed and stored at each site, which carried environmental costs and made it harder for staff to be confident they had the most up-to-date version when and where they needed it.

It was time to find a smarter, more scalable way forward.

See it in action with a short video

The challenge

Like many organisations with large estates, LNWR & WM Railway needed a way to make chemical safety information instantly accessible, wherever staff were working. Paper systems came with several drawbacks. Workers sometimes had to travel long distances across sites just to access the right assessment.

It was difficult to confirm whether staff had read and understood the information. Responsibility for compliance sat heavily with central staff, even though they weren’t always familiar with local usage conditions. And printing and storing hundreds of assessments carried an unnecessary environmental impact.

As an ISO 9001 accredited organisation, the risks of inefficiency and potential non-conformance flagged during internal audits highlighted the need for a more reliable and future-ready solution.

The solution

Vijay Singh, Fleet Safety, Quality and Environmental Manager, worked with EcoOnline to introduce access to risk assessments via QR codes.

QR codes were placed in relevant locations across depots and stations, allowing workers to scan them with a mobile device and instantly access the most up-to-date COSHH assessment and chemical safety information.

Field-based staff also have the ability to request new assessments directly through the platform, with Vijay providing oversight and approval. It also marked an important step toward digitalising operations, replacing paper copies with mobile-first access that put chemical safety data exactly where it was needed.

The impact

The introduction of QR codes has transformed how LNWR & WM Railway manages COSHH compliance. Staff can now access accurate information in seconds, making compliance easier to maintain and audits simpler to prepare for. Adoption has grown across the workforce, with nearly 100 Sypol users now actively engaged in supporting safety management.

The efficiencies are clear. Hundreds of hours of staff time have been saved by eliminating unnecessary travel to retrieve paperwork. The move away from paper has also reduced environmental impact, aligning compliance with wider sustainability goals. The success of the initiative has even prompted interest from other train operators, and Vijay’s leadership has been recognised with a nomination for an industry award.

The story

London Northwestern and West Midlands Railway operates across an extensive area, covering hundreds of depots and stations. With staff spread across such a large network, chemical safety had to be managed in a way that was consistent, reliable, and easy to access. Yet, with nearly 700 COSHH assessments in circulation, providing up-to-date information to every worker in every location was a demanding task.

Traditionally, assessments were printed and stored at the sites where they were needed. While this worked on a basic level, it came with challenges. Paper copies were hard to keep current, travel time to retrieve them slowed down operations, and demonstrating that workers had read and understood the information was difficult. The process also created an environmental burden through high paper usage.

For Vijay Singh, Fleet Safety, Quality and Environmental Manager, the need for a modern solution was clear. Working with EcoOnline, he introduced a new way forward with QR codes that link directly to the Sypol COSHH Management software. This feature gave workers immediate mobile access to chemical safety information wherever they were on site, cutting waste, saving time, and making compliance easier to prove.

The approach has since raised the bar on COSHH management across the estate, embedding safety into daily operations in a way that is both efficient and sustainable. It’s a step that has not only improved worker protection, but also influenced conversations with other train operators, who are actively considering adoption of the same approach.