Seminars take place in the Rail Engineer Seminar Theatre on stand D61
10:30 – OPENING CEREMONY
Gordon Wakeford, Co-chair, Rail Supply Group
Anna Delvecchio, Commercial Account Director, Amey
Darren Caplan, Chief Executive, Railway Industry Association
Nicola Hamann, Managing Director, Mack Brooks Exhibitions
Nicola Hamann is the new managing director of show organiser Mack Brooks Exhibitions. Purchased by RELX on behalf of Reed Exhibitions earlier this year, Mack Brooks also organises rail industry exhibitions in France and Italy as well as shows for a number of other sectors around the world, particularly in the fields of industrial fasteners and sheet metalwork.
Darren Caplan joined RIA as Chief Executive in January 2017. Since then he has led the RIA team, with a mission to promote rail supply sector growth and increase RIA’s visibility amongst political and stakeholder decision makers and influencers. Prior to RIA, Darren was for six years chief executive of the Airport Operators Association (AOA), the trade association for UK airports and the sector’s suppliers, where he led award-winning campaigns targeting airport sector growth and fairer levels of aviation tax.
Anna Delvecchio began her career in rail as an apprentice. Now commercial accounts director at Amey, she is currently seconded to the Rail Supply Group and was part of the team that drove through the recently announced Rail Sector Deal between industry and government and is the current Transport Woman of the Year, as announced at the 2018 FTA everywoman in Transport & Logistics Awards.
Gordon Wakeford is head of Siemens Mobility in the UK and also co-chair of the Rail Supply Group, a role he shares with the Secretaries of Sate for Transport and for Business. As such, working with a team that included Philip Hoare of Atkins and Anna Delvecchio of Amey, he was instrumental in developing the Rail Sector Deal.
He will deliver a keynote speech on the topic of the Rail Sector Deal later in the morning.
11:10 – Predictive Maintenance Strategies for Continuous Track Monitoring
Deep Desai
Business Development & Strategy, Frauscher Tracking Solutions
Reducing maintenance costs is a task of high importance. Systems, which enable a complete and continuous monitoring of assets on tracks, can support appropriate approaches. Additionally, they can provide relevant information to improve efficiency and traffic management.
Due to the importance of such applications, and based on the high number of components that need to be monitored on tracks and trains, a vast number of technologies and systems are available today to meet all related requirements. This plurality, as well as the fact that several units might be needed for various tasks contribute to rising efforts.
The newly developed Frauscher Tracking Solutions FTS provides a vision of an efficient solution to continuously monitor the track health outlining a paradigm shift towards predictive maintenance strategies. By continuously monitoring the wheel-rail interaction, the Frauscher Tracking Solutions FTS detect changes in the condition of various assets at a very early stage. This forms the base for a cost-effective option to continuously monitor components on tracks of a whole network at a glance.
11:50 – KEYNOTE: The Rail Sector Deal – Working together for the future
Gordon Wakeford
Co-chair, Rail Supply Group
The Rail Sector Deal will build on the strong partnership working between the rail sector and the government to exploit the opportunities of new technologies, improve the efficient use of rail network capacity and enhance the experience of those who use the railways.
In its foreword, the Rail Sector Deal states that it will enable companies to drive innovation, invest in research and development, up-skill the workforce and look beyond the UK to export markets worldwide. It will provide certainty for the industry, with clarity and involvement in shaping investment in the railways for the first time, and, through this collaboration between government and businesses, it will provide better railways for the country’s rail customers.
In his keynote address, Gordon Wakeford will consider just how implementation of the new Rail Sector Deal will help improve both the railway and its supply chain. What is needed to make it more efficient? And what export opportunities could present themselves once the Rail Sector Deal starts to make itself felt?
It is too easy to see the railway as a mode of transport, which of course it is, and not to remember it is also a business – but it is.
12:30 – CBTC or ERTMS? The answer is ATO
Ian Jones
Key account manager, Siemens Mobility
The railway industry is seeing unprecedented rates of change. The move towards a ‘digital’ railway has seen a significant acceleration in the adoption of new technologies, not least those that provide command and control of the trains themselves.
The railway press is full of references to technologies including communication-based train control (CBTC) and the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS). These systems unlock capacity and improving safety levels through the use of secure digital radio messages sent between trackside and train-carried equipment, allowing levels of throughput and operational flexibility that were not previously possible.
These train protection systems are only half the story though; automatic train operation (ATO) uses computer-based technology to drive every train at the optimum speed at every location along a track.
Whilst ATO has been part of the metro railway world for some 50 years, it is new to main line operation. On London Underground’s Victoria line, a 36 trains-per-hour timetable is delivered smoothly and efficiently by ATO-driven trains under the supervision of a world-class control centre solution that continuously evaluates the state of the railway and makes adjustments to service to maintain 100-second headways.
The Thameslink project takes a similar approach on a heavy suburban system running through severely constrained infrastructure, using ATO not only to ensure that every train can make use of the capacity unlocked by ERTMS, but also to optimise the use of energy and infrastructure as well as minimise wear on critical rolling stock components.
13:10 – How can we digitise the journey to benefit the customer?
Mike Hewitt
Chief Technical Officer, ADComms
How do we deliver a customer-focused transport model? The rail industry needs to meet the challenge of future multimodal journey options, including ride sharing application, autonomous vehicles, drone-based taxis, personal vehicles, and the challenges that rail transportation will face from new connected modes of transportation, and become integrated into one of many options that the passenger will have.
It’s no longer just about getting from A to B – the passenger demands connectivity, information, and reliable infrastructure to get them from their home to their destination.
How does the rail supply chain respond to these challenges? What are the opportunities to introduce technologies like IoT, BlockChain/Distributed Ledger, Assisted Intelligence, Additive Manufacturing, and Automation to deliver innovative new solution into legacy infrastructure?
In his presentation, Mike Hewitt will look at the challenges that connectivity presents, and the opportunities it enables – at the application of new technologies, and collaboration that will enable innovation. He will talk about the security implications and considerations, including cyber security, when mixing and supporting legacy and connected infrastructure.
Lastly, he will consider the models that the railway will need so that it can engage and collaborate with innovators, SMEs and the large organisations so as to bring true innovation to the rail industry, to allow it to be more responsive, more agile and be able to apply new ways of working that reflect local needs and deliver a resilient, reliable end-to-end journey that places rail at the centre of connected passenger journeys and the centre of freight transportation for the next 50 years.
13:50 – Signal and Stop Board Stand Back survey and assessments
Simon Gardiner, Managing Director, Gioconda
Steve Jones, Production Manager, Gioconda
Gioconda was established in the UK in 2006, specifically to develop desktop signal sighting tools for the UK rail market.
The award of two Network Rail framework contracts helped to establish the business as a primary source for UK signal sighting and driver briefing. Since then, Gioconda has worked on some of the biggest and smallest projects in the UK and prides itself on the quality, accuracy and efficiency of its services.
In this presentation, Gioconda will take you through the process it uses to capture, process and report on cab stand back to stop board validity. The speakers will explain to delegates:
- How to use simple train-borne video correlated to aerial imagery for a stage 1 check;
- Options for a more detailed, higher accuracy, stage 2 check;
- The modelling process to use where remedial action is required.
The presentation will demonstrate how this can be used in an underground situation and talk about the varying limitations imposed by operators when arranging to capture data using in service and special train services.
14:30 – ZF EcoWorld: Efficiency with Connectivity
Steve Brew
Key Account Manager – Rail Drive Systems, ZF Friedrichshafen
ZF Friedrichshafen is involved on a number of projects to introduce high efficiency ZF EcoWorld2 transmissions as retrofit option for existing DMU trains in the UK.
This is also an opportunity to showcase ZF Smart condition monitoring technology being developed in line with the company’s ‘See = Think = Act’ principle.
In his presentation, Steve Brew will aim to provide an introduction to the feature of ZF EcoWorld2 with an overview of ZF Connect@Rail digitisation for Rail applications.
15:10 – Trust: How cyber secure are you?
Steve Little
Cyber Lead, Frazer-Nash
There is an unprecedented amount of investment, and hence change, in the UK rail sector – spanning major infrastructure projects, the replacement of rolling stock, staff processes and procedures, and methods for accessing train information and buying tickets. The introduction of new systems is complicated by having to co-exist with legacy systems and practices dating back over many decades.
The rail sector has, for many years, been an evangelist in ensuring the safety of passengers and staff. However, as a consequence of digitalisation and legislation, the threat posed from cyber space is being considered – specifically how to identify, protect, detect, respond or recover from a cyber-attack.
Typically, this has been considered solely a technology problem, but complex enterprises, such as the rail sector, are an amalgam of People, Processes, Information, Technology and Facilities (PPITF).
Countering these cyber threats, and the risks they pos,e requires a whole system approach and understanding of PPITF and the interdependencies between them. In tackling this challenge the rail sector could learn lessons from other sectors, balancing the new with the legacy, ensuring any mitigation or response is both appropriate and proportionate.
As part of his presentation, Steve Little will provide insight into how other sectors such as energy and defence understand and mitigate their cyber risk by considering PPITF holistically.
15:50 – Real-time remote diagnostics and condition monitoring
– improving asset utilisation and reducing maintenance cost
Severinas Monkevicius
Product Manager, Trimble
As the world population increases – and becomes increasingly urban – the need for efficient transportation networks becomes ever more pressing. The pressures on modern train operating companies increase every year – as networks reach capacity and assets age. Efficient management of rail assets requires accurate, authoritative data delivered in a timely manner.
The focus of rail asset lifecycle management technology (which encompass real-time remote diagnostics and proactive component condition monitoring) is the automated collection and analysis of data to allow for high performance asset management and planning, allowing train operators to increase utilization and reduce maintenance costs. The lifeblood of these solutions is actionable intelligence derived from the processing of the abundance of raw data available from sensors on-board and wayside.
Drawing on recent project examples from across the European passenger and Australian freight sectors, this presentation will look at the benefits of rail asset lifecycle management and demonstrate how many customers are deriving real value from these solutions.
The seminar programme in detail:
