Problem:

London Overground (part of Transport for London) have a regulatory requirement to comply with Network Rail Signalling Maintenance Standards (SMS). These standards mandate that paper card records of tests and readings must be kept on site in the equipment location, however this introduces a number of issues and risks – specifically:

  • There is a significant risk of maintenance records being lost or damaged as a consequence of fire, vandalism, water ingress or vermin.
  • A member of staff must be sent to the equipment location in order to query previous tests and readings.
  • As well as being both inefficient and costly this also increases the level of risk for staff and contractors by unnecessarily increasing the number of trackside visits.
Solution:

Working with London Overground we were asked if we could develop a method of capturing information from the signalling record cards via a mobile platform but still retaining the on site paper based record cards in order to maintain compliance with the Network Rail standards.

We quickly determined that the requirement could be easily and rapidly delivered using our Mobile Asset Management app with a custom data capture form configured to the client’s specific requirements.

Again, we designed our solution to work offline since many of the signalling assets on the East London Line are below ground and have limited WiFi or 3G/4G connectivity. It was vital that data could continue to be collected and securely stored on the users device in these areas until a signal became available at which point the solution automatically uploads the record.

Our solution was designed to allow signalling technicians to capture digital photographs of the updated signalling record card. At the same time the system allowed them to associate these with the asset and its unique SAP equipment number and a work order or fault number.

 

 

The solution automatically associates the record with the date, time and signalling technician along with a geospatial reference (when a signal is available). Once the signalling technician has uploaded the record a digital signalling record card is automatically generated, processed into a PDF report and emailed to the signalling manager to be stored in a dedicated SharePoint site (a future upgrade option will enable automatic upload to the client SharePoint site).

Outcome:

The app was developed, piloted and fully deployed to 30 users over a 6 week period during April and May 2017 and the organisation is now successfully capturing digital signalling record cards and starting to build up a comprehensive library of records as the signalling technicians perform regular cyclical maintenance or respond to faults on the infrastructure. Already a number of cost, efficiency and safety benefits have been realised by avoiding unnecessary site visits.