Use of Innovation and Technology to Maximise Capacity and Performance of Railway Infrastructure
Omnicom Balfour Beatty share their thoughts on how innovation and technology can be deployed to maximise the capacity and performance of the rail infrastructure. The presentation will focus on real life examples of how Remote Condition Monitoring (AssetVIEW) and Vehicle based Vision Systems (OmniCapture3D) can be used to maximise infrastructure reliability whilst minimising onsite maintenance activities.
Ian Bridges Professional Head of Signalling & Engineering Director(Balfour Beatty) and President of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE) will introduce the talk.
Dr Jonathan Owen is the Product Owner (Survey & Vision) for Omnicom Balfour Beatty. Omnicom Balfour Beatty was created when Balfour Beatty acquired Omnicom Engineering Limited in October 2016. He began working for Omnicom Engineering Limited in 2001 after completing his PHD in Applied Mathematics. He has been instrumental in developing Omnicom’s world class surveying and positioning systems both from a hardware and software setting. Jonathan has worked on products and services delivered to the major UK Railways as well as applications in Australia, Japan and the United States of America.
Mark Robinson is the Product Owner (AssetView) for Omnicom Balfour Beatty. He began working for Omnicom Balfour Beatty in 2013 and during this time has been involved in the development of all fixed asset condition monitoring software currently offered by OBB. Having first been employed as a senior software developer working primarily on the Points Condition Monitoring solution, he progressed to software team lead overseeing the software development of all condition monitoring software, eventually becoming the product owner for AssetView. As the Product Owner, Mark is responsible for the development and the continued support of the AssetView product and its infrastructure. Mark has worked on products and services delivered to Network Rail as well as applications in Hong Kong and Singapore. In previous careers Mark has developed systems to support Reliability Centred Maintenance in the Royal Navy and has designed and developed environmental control systems for the petroleum industry.
Heathrow TTS Capacity Enhancement
Set within Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 is a fully automated GoA4 (Grade of Automation 4) people mover that carries millions of passengers every year between departures and arrivals. Over a decade after it was first brought into use, the Tracked Transit System (TTS) is undergoing its first major upgrade - this will introduce a brand-new fleet of vehicles, as well as enhancements to the automatic signalling system to substantially increase system capacity. A major feature of the upgrade project is the introduction of Automatic Train Operation to an existing depot road to enable both maintenance activities and hot-spare functionality. This talk will give an introduction to the TTS, walk through the capacity enhancements project scope, and discuss how working on an airport transit system differs from other railway projects.
Alastair Hayden is a Chartered Engineer and member of both the IRSE and IET. Alastair is SNC-Lavalin Atkins’ Technology Lead for Wayside Signalling, and enjoys project delivery of modern signalling upgrades – he has previously worked on London Underground’s 4LM Project, TfL’s East London Line and currently supports several signalling upgrade projects around the world. Alastair is part of SNC-Lavalin Atkins’s Technical Advisor team to Heathrow Airport.
Nathan Michael Hill is a Senior Engineering Manager at Heathrow Airport, he starting his career as an advanced modern engineering apprentice and has worked his way through the organisation to form part of the SLT. He has extensive knowledge on all systems that make up an automated rail system he specialises in signalling, control room operations, maintenance actives, fault finding, Networking, HV voltage systems, tunnel vent systems and general wayside knowledge. As part of his role at Heathrow he helped the Exec understand the benefits of the Enhancements project that is currently in progress.
50+ Years of London Underground Rolling Stock
Graham Neil has recently retired as the Professional Head of Vehicles for TfL and during his 50 year career with LU/TfL he has seen some significant changes and improvements in rolling stock design. Graham will describe these design improvements, the reasons they were implemented and what changes are likely to be seen in the future.
Graham Neil is the recently retired Professional Head of Vehicles for TfL. He began his rolling stock career with LU in 1971 as an electrical apprentice and after a short spell in electronics maintenance he joined the rolling stock design department. For over 20 years Graham held various technical engineering posts in rolling stock auxiliary equipment, electronic development, client engineering, new stock engineering and as the Northern Line Project 1995TS rolling stock engineer. In 2000 he joined the LU Chief Engineers Department as the Control Systems Engineer overseeing the introduction of the ATO System on the Central Line and the Depot Electrical Installation Supply improvement Project as LU transitioned into the PPP Contract. Graham subsequently became the Chief Rolling Stock Engineer/Professional Head of Rolling Stock responsible for ensuring that all trains that operate on the LU system are safe, reliable, meet statutory requirements and are fit for their intended purpose. In 2018 Graham became the Professional Head of Vehicles for TfL Engineering and became professionally responsible for the assignment and development of all rolling stock engineers within TfL Engineering. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the IET, a Fellow of the IMechE and past chairman of the IMechE Railway Division Board and has represented LU at RIA T&RS groups, BSI RAE/1European Standards oversight committee as well as being the TfL chairman of the UITP Metros Division Rolling Stock Subcommittee and TfL representative the NSARE T&RS Skills Policy Group and UNIFE’s IRIS Industry Advisory Board.
Particle Accelerators and Railways - Spot The Difference
Hurtling through a noisy tunnel with only dim evacuation lighting and walls covered in power supply and communications cabling - you must be on an LU service, surely? But in fact you could equally be a particle whizzing through some of the largest scientific instruments on Earth! The similarities between modern railways and these machines continue with centralised and distributed control systems, safety-critical interlocking implementations, demanding availability and expensive penalties. The adoption of the same new trends can also be seen in both industries - conversion to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions, the use of cloud services and introducing machine learning for failure insights and mitigation.
This talk will explore these similarities and compare the evolution of infrastructure for both applications.
Laurence Stant is a radio-frequency engineer at Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron particle accelerator. His early interest in railways probably encouraged him to pursue a BSc in Physics and later PhD in Microwave Engineering from the University of Surrey, Guildford. He is a volunteer at Didcot Railway Centre in the S&T and Civils departments and was previously with the Swindon Panel Society where he developed an interest in signalling control and interlocking systems.