ASSET MANAGEMENT
“We very successfully rolled out that technology, with some new apps, and introduced GPS to the railway. We moved from miles and chains to also being able to talk the language of GPS co-ordinates, and convert easily between the two.”
analyse that and the sorts of decision support tools that we can offer.”
The programme generated headlines early on with the decision to deploy ruggedised iPhones and iPads to thousands of staff: 13,500 currently.
Bossert said: “They were delivered as a personal tool for the job, very much like PPE. You’re expected to turn up to work with your phone charged as one of the tools to do what we need you to do.
“In that fi rst year we did a lot of work with the unions on the industrial relations aspect of what we were doing. They were very supportive and saw it as giving people the right tools for the job. We issued those devices as personal devices, effectively unlocked so people could have their own applications, own music, own email and use the internet.
He said the GPS Finder app has made it far easier to fi nd the right place that works need to be done. A track geometry correction, for example, is easy to spot when there’s a train rolling over it, but trying to fi nd it “with a spirit level in the middle of the night on a half-mile of track” is quite a challenge – one that GPS has “revolutionised”.
Many other apps are now available, and when the scheme launched, Network Rail asked for ideas for new ones too. Bossert said: “We had so many ideas – over 700 ideas for applications came in. The appetite for it was absolutely huge. The programme has been challenged to keep up with the production of apps in line with the expectation that created.”
He said his team has been working with Network Rail Group Business Services on a corporate app development capability, meaning they can be developed with the
relevant corporate style and user experience standards much more quickly.
Digital enablement
Another key aspect has been LADS, linear asset decision support. Databases of linear assets – assets maintained in segments or sections, of which rail of course has plenty – are notoriously diffi cult to create. Bossert said: “Many businesses have struggled with it, and we now have a lot of other linear infrastructure managers from around the world coming to see what we’ve done.
“We’ve imported lots of different datasets that relate to track; whether it’s the rails or the sleepers or the ballast quality or the ground penetrating radar or geology data, or the drainage data – it’s all there, all in one place, and it’s geo-aligned. We put an analytic engine behind it and we also imported the historical workbank and the future workbank. By bringing all of those into one place we can, for the fi rst time, see exactly how effective our maintenance and renewals plans have been historically, and will be predictively into the future. This is a hugely powerful tool, because it enables us to rebuild our renewals
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rail technology magazine Apr/May 14 | 119
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