Railway Medical & D&A

Railway Medical & Drugs & Alcohol

Medical Summary: Any employee must have a PTS Medical before attending a PTS course to work on Network Rail Infrastructure.

The PTS medical is designed to ensure that all individuals in safety critical roles have physical capacity to be reliably safe when working on tracks, for their own benefit and for those around them.

The competency-specific assessment covers a medical questionnaire, height/weight/BMI, blood pressure, pulse, blood glucose level, mobility, vision testing (including colour vision), hearing test.

D&A Summary: You are required to undertake Network Rail D&A screening before sitting a PTS Training Initial course. The NWR drug test is a lab analysis of a urine sample. The rail industry has an alcohol cut off level of 13 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath.

Network Rail’s drug and alcohol policy is zero-tolerance. If you test positive for any of the substances in the 7 panel, your Sentinel card will be cancelled, and you will not be able to work on their infrastructure for 5 years.