Managing the interface between routine maintenance, infrastructure enhancement and asset degradation trends is a challenge for many railways, but development of a comprehensive 'data spine' could help to foster commercially-focused, high-availability networks. More broadly, infrastructure managers are starting to look at their networks and maintenance policies in more commercial terms. On-rail capacity is a commodity which infrastructure managers are seeking to sell to their customers, and as a consequence they are starting to assess the factors which could impinge on their ability to deliver those paths to the market. Most railways around the world already have access to a slew of computerised data covering many of the parameters identified above. But often data sets are incomplete, held in a variety of formats, or inaccessible to the whole organisation or its contractors. Even more serious is the challenge of change management if a data set is removed from the repository, for example as part of routine signalling or track maintenance work on a particular section, what are the consequences? In many cases, a particular data repository cannot be accessed by a project team because it is used to feed critical systems, such as signalling and train control equipment, and thus cannot be put at risk of alteration. A track diagram, for example, could be used to maintain real-time train running data, and therefore amending it has real consequences for business processes. Creation of a 'data spine' across an entire network can be a time-consuming exercise, and not especially easy to achieve. There are clear efficiencies to be gained from the creation over the long term of a general data store using either actual or 'visible' asset data. Ideally, a railway would wish to have all its data centralised and accessible, but we must accept that this is not always possible. Long-term, data storage is likely to become more focused on a database model. While the standards which will govern this process are still emerging, the introduction of common formats such as COBiE should facilitate the handover of project data and tagged elements through the life-cycle, from construction to handover to maintenance and operations, although clearly this pattern applies primarily to the construction of new infrastructure. But the development of such basic handover models for new projects could form the basis for more sophisticated approaches around whole-life asset management. Maintenance of legacy assets introduces added complexity of course, primarily because of the need for change management, where those who oversee a particular asset, zone or network are not necessarily the same people who intervene to change it. Consider emergency repairs to a railway where the data store is not updated to reflect the changes made, and the infrastructure manager may not even receive a report detailing exactly what work was undertaken.
Develop a data spine to optimise maintenance
Railway Gazette International ; 169 , 3 ; 36-38
2013
3 Seiten, 3 Bilder
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Englisch
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