On April 16, 2024, Norfolk Southern Corporation (“NSC”) updated its website www.VoteNorfolkSouthern.com, which contains information relating to NSC’s 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, to include a video. A copy of the transcript for the video can be found below and may be used in whole or in part in additional communications by NSC:
Dr. Christopher Jones and Admiral Philip Davidson Video
Dr. Christopher Jones
I’m Dr. Chris Jones and I’m chair of the safety committee for the Norfolk Southern board of directors. I’ve had the unique career in roles that involve safety, and I bring that to Norfolk Southern.
Admiral Philip Davidson
My name is Admiral Phil Davidson. I’m retired from the U.S. Navy, and on the board, I serve on both the safety committee and the financial and risk management committees.
My experience in strategy and risk, in risk management and mitigation and [in] organizational design [and] operational concepts all lend themselves to helping out an industry like the railroad, and Norfolk Southern specifically.
Dr. Christopher Jones
For our board, safety is paramount.
Admiral Philip Davidson
Our objective is to make the culture of Norfolk Southern a safety culture, because we believe that a safety culture will deliver the safest possible railroad that delivers the best possible service.
Dr. Christopher Jones
Operating a safe railroad is in direct alignment with our overall company strategy. Having a safer railroad is more efficient. It increases the satisfaction of our customers, which supports our strategy to grow. And it helps with our employees by creating an environment in which they feel safe to come to work.
Admiral Philip Davidson
The roles and responsibilities of the safety committee, first and foremost, is to review all the safety data. Secondly, to be there for the executives, to provide the oversight that is required, help them deal with safety issues, and really, it’s to deliver on the initiatives that were approved by the company. And it’s resulted in implementation of a six-point safety plan.
The priorities in our safety plan that’s six implementation items is first to enhance the hot bearing detector network. Secondly, to pilot the next generation in hot bearing detectors. Third, to increase the deployment of our acoustic bearing network.
Dr. Christopher Jones
Another critical part of the six-point safety plan is improving our culture. We’re developing new technology in the form of digital inspection portals.
The last item that’s part of the six-point safety plan is the sharing of information with the other railroads.
After the incident at East Palestine, the board took decisive actions.
We pushed for more data – more real-time data – regarding safety and increased the amount of trend and data analysis that we performed, and that was briefed both to the safety committee and to the overall committee.
Specifically, being a military officer, it was important for me to have boots on the ground. So, we went out and visited a number of sites, facilities, rail yards to get direct feedback from our craft employees and all of our employees about our safety culture, where we were doing things well, and the opportunities for improvement.
