ASSET MANAGEMENT
Bossert said the fi rst target was simple but cumbersome – track engineering forms, usually known as TEFs. Typically, patrollers who spot faults or work that needs doing pass that information to the track section manager via the TEF, who, using a ‘work arising instruction form’ (WAIF), has it implemented on Ellipse.
Bossert said: “We effectively digitised those with some helpful and visual apps. That was making sure we didn’t try to run before we could walk.
workbank to optimally target the right work in the right place.”
It also cuts down on unnecessary work, such as renewing assets whose performance is still high. Section managers’ feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive”, Bossert told us. “For the fi rst time, they’ve got all the information they need to better understand how the asset in their particular section is performing.”
Edward Morley, head of business engagement at Network Rail, has explained the company’s fi ve asset-related information types: fi xed asset information (physical infrastructure, asset type, location, condition, failure history, utilisation); fl eet asset information (FAMS, RVAR, National Vehicle Register); topological information (schematics: capacity, capability, gauging, real-time status); topographical information (geography: underground services, CAD, GIS, photogrammetry); and unstructured information (drawings, controlled documents, schematics).
In a presentation for the BCS last year, Morley explained that Network Rail spends £30m a year surveying bits of land, but that historically the results have ended up “in deep storage in Cheshire”. But it is data with tremendous value once digitised and geo-linked.
Morley said that across Asset Information, terabyte after terabyte of data is being turned into information that actually informs people out on the track, making their jobs quicker, safer, and more effi cient.
In the same presentation, programme manager Keith Farquharson said the transformation over seven years consisted of around 40 projects. The graphic on the previous page gives a fl avour of them.
Paper cuts
We asked Bossert for progress reports on some of the specifi c aims of ORBIS, such as cutting down on Network Rail’s 4.3 million paper- based inspection records every year.
120 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 14
“The gas industry, when it went digital, changed all of its forms and paperwork – the adoption by the workforce was very low as a result. The lesson is that the fi rst step should be giving people what they already know, but in a digital form, to take the cumbersome paperwork and re-entry aspects out.
“We have very successfully delivered a lot of digital forms over the past year. We’re now piloting mobile work management, which is effectively taking the 135,000 jobs that we run through Ellipse every four weeks and delivering those as digital work orders via the handheld platform.
“Our approach has always been to do a trial followed by a proper pilot on a number of routes and then make the adjustments before we roll it out nationally.
“We’re at the pilot stage, and it’s been incredibly well-received. We envisage, this year, we will move to paperless works order management, plus remove other items of paper from the actual delivery procedures as well.”
Buried services enquiries
Another aim has been to improve buried services enquiries. These can now be turned around in 24 hours, instead of weeks. The eventual aim is a full self-service model, but Bossert admitted that this is a much bigger step.
“That’s something we haven’t progressed over the last year. We wanted to see how the 24-hour turnaround on buried services information was working. That turnaround still involves scrutiny by a competent buried services engineer within the Asset Information organisation, before it’s issued. It was quite a big step to move to complete self-service, where we’re not providing a level of assurance.
“We certainly envisage buried services being digitised over the coming 24 months and included in the geographic information datasets that we make available. But clearly there’s a lot of safety risk associated with those services, and it’s not something we’d want to do without all right assurance processes in place.”
Visualising the railway
Visualisation is a powerful tool when planning, preparing for and carrying out work. Using three dimensional images overlaid with geo- information, planners can see, measure and mark up much more effectively.
Bossert said: “This is the year that we bring the railway from the outside world to the inside world. This is what ORBIS will be known for.
“It will help with work planning and grouping, and it helps with the individual work plans. We will have better information on access points, what can be brought on to site through those access points, what the height and weight restrictions are for cranes or MPVs, and so on.
“So, as well as making the work safer through better planning, it will also result in fewer aborted jobs, where we fi nd once the job starts that there were some unexpected parameters, like bridge height restrictions and other things that maybe couldn’t be taken into account during the planning phase.
“Being able to visualise the railway is also really important for the COSS briefi ngs – the safety briefi ngs. On our railway, we have about 60,000 people with Sentinel cards, of whom 22,000 are our own staff. So the ability to extend this into the supply chain, so we can brief contractors less familiar with some of the work sites, again is very important.
“Through ORBIS, we’re building a geographic information portal. That will be extensible to the supply chain as well as our own staff.”
Grayrigg – never again
The Grayrigg derailment in 2007 in Cumbria, which caused the death of 84-year-old Margaret Masson, was caused by a faulty set of points.
Recommendations 2-4 of the RAIB report were about new processes to gather and analyse data via a single national database and to move to
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