PERMANENT WAY SOLUTIONS
A site to behold W
The F2A project, aimed at improving capacity on the Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace route, is the fi rst major rail scheme to make use of Mission Room technology, which allows planners, engineers and track workers to see a 360° view of the site from inside the project offi ces. RTM heard more from Network Rail’s Ian Grant, Balfour Beatty Rail’s Adam Stuart, and Mission Room’s Dr Bryan Denby.
hen it comes to planning, there is nothing like being out on site to really understand what a project involves – at least, until now.
Network Rail and Balfour Beatty Rail, who are delivering the F2A project to upgrade the Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace route via platform extensions, freight lines conversions to make them suitable for passenger traffi c, improved signalling and line speed and the addition of new crossovers, are making use of a new technology that offers an immersive experience of a work site without needing to be there at all.
Seeing it all
Mission Room involves video footage being taken of the site, but instead of being displayed back on a fl at monitor, it can be experienced from inside a ‘cube’ with visualisations on all sides, giving a much better idea of exactly what is out there.
Network Rail F2A project manager Ian Grant told RTM: “Mission Room enhances the visualisation, without a doubt. That was the fi rst comment we got back from people – that being able to see the complete circle of visualisation enhances the brief.
“So, if for example, you’re going to explain to somebody what work environment they are going to be in on Saturday night, then you take them in the week before, or before the shift starts, and you can actually ‘teleport’ them to site. You can take them to the workplace so they can visualise it as if they were standing there in a particular position. You can then identify the hazards on the site very clearly.
“If I was in the cube, for example, I’d be able to point at a hazard and it wouldn’t just be explaining that this is a hole in the ground or a live piece of wire – you’d be able to visualise it as well, which in the past you couldn’t do. You can do certain things with pictures, so you can put a picture up on a monitor screen and say ‘this is live’ but actually you get a much better feel if you have a 360° view of where you are.”
Balfour Beatty Rail’s project director, Adam Stuart added: “Introducing this new technology obviously involved an investment of time and resource at the start of the project to capture all the footage but we were confi dent that the effi ciencies it would deliver further down the line would outweigh this initial investment.”
Grant said the F2A project was particularly suitable for using Mission Room technology because the line is in an urban area with lots of complicated lines and isolations. He added: “This was an interesting project in complexity but it was also good timing, because its start coincided
44 | rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 12
with the technology being at its best and ready to be used.”
Lots to learn
Network Rail and Balfour Beatty Rail have been working on the design-and-build contract since May 2011, with work beginning on site from Christmas 2011 – and it was at that stage that Mission Room was used for the fi rst time.
The technology is designed to be customisable and ultimately left to clients to run themselves, rather than as a service that would need constant external involvement from Mission Room staff.
The company’s managing director, Dr Bryan Denby, said: “The F2A installation was the fi rst in the rail sector, so we were learning as they were learning. For the fi rst few months we were refi ning the technology, while they were understanding how best to utilise it, and we’ve moved to a point where things have settled down a bit now.
“It is just like any technology – you have to plan how you are going to get the best out of it.”
Grant agreed, telling us: “To start with, getting our heads around the technology was something that involved moving into an area where no-one has any training, but it is very straightforward technology. We get given a camera: we take the camera to wherever we want to take some footage, whether we want moving footage or whether we want static footage: it is very simple.
“You press the button to get the four cameras working and the footage is started. You take the footage you want and you start utilising it.
“In the early days, it was clear to us that we weren’t really sure what we were going to use the footage for, but we quickly learnt lessons. It has a range of functions, whether it be a safety function, a planning function, or for a review of operations.”
Immersive experience
RTM asked what the engineers and track workers on site had made of the technology – whether they had been impressed or like to think they’ve seen it all before.
Cont. overleaf > i More stories like this at:
www.railtechnologymagazine.com/ track-and-signalling
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