VIA Rail Canada has selected KMI, a software firm based in Oakville, Ont., to upgrade the corporation's environmental and safety management systems. The C$270,000 contract, which is entirely funded by the Government of Canada's Economic Action Plan, will provide VIA with KMI's integrated software to centralize environment, health and safety data collection, event reporting and analysis throughout the corporation's coast-to-coast network. KMI's Incident Management, Corrective Action, and Reporting & Dashboard systems will be implemented at all VIA locations across Canada by the end of the year.

VIA became one of the first railways in Canada to implement an integrated safety management system in 2001, and has continually refined and expanded the system since then.

Jean Tierney, VIA's senior director, safety, security and risk management said that "the new software suite will centralize and streamline the process for analyzing environmental, health and safety data. It will also provide managers real time statistical performance data for trend and risk analysis, from all sites across Canada, rolled up to the corporate level. The KMI software suite gives us the enhanced functionality and flexibility we need to make the entire system more efficient and cost-effective."

The system upgrade is part of the Government of Canada's unprecedented C$923-million capital investment to modernize passenger rail infrastructure, equipment and technology. "Safety is a top priority for our government," said the Honorable Rob Merrifield, Canada's Minister of State (Transport). "This investment leverages the best possible information technology to safeguard employees, customers and communities served by passenger rail across the country."

Matt Airhart, director of business development for KMI, added: "Our fully configurable, multilingual and Web-based system will provide VIA Rail employees an easy to use tool for reporting hazards and incidents while tracking investigations and corrective actions. The ability for management to quickly access real-time performance statistics across all regions of Canada and execute action plans targeting risk throughout the organization will lead to significant safety improvements and cost savings."