Tube gets new remote monitoring system

Response time to faults set to improve with major investment in London Underground

Metronet Rail, the public-private partnership that maintains two-thirds of the London Underground, has invested £5.6m in a remote monitoring system to improve response to faults.

The system, developed by rail technology firm Transmitton, will be installed in 47 equipment rooms on the Central Line so that maintenance staff can receive real-time updates about signalling faults and dispatch engineers faster.

The remote monitoring software, to be rolled out by spring 2006, will use graphical displays to show train movements and potential problems.

‘Remote monitoring will allow a robust and reliable means of collecting signalling data. We can now repair signalling faults more quickly, minimising passenger disruption,’ said Howard Cocking, Metronet project manager.

‘It is helping to achieve a safer railway and allowing staff to spot potential failures by raising alarms when abnormal conditions are detected.’

Analysis software will also help staff to identify trends and recurring faults and fix them accordingly.

Engineers and station managers will be able to access the Transmitton software remotely and receive updates via a laptop or smartphone.

Metronet is also developing a collaborative document management system to improve how the consortium’s members and their suppliers share information.

The system will protect documents when they are emailed to another supply chain partner, so that changes can only be made by a person with authorship rights. This means that errors will be less likely to appear in reports and business documents.

‘It will provide higher levels of corporate governance and allow different people to participate in the authorship, so we can share information with supply chain partners in a secure way,’ said Charles Marks, group IT director at Metronet.

The company is close to shortlisting a supplier for the project, codenamed ‘C Doc M’, and expects to begin introducing the technology across the organisation in January 2006.

‘We have systems which bring a single source of truth for assets, capital expenditure, HR and finance. What this system does is take this to the next stage, so that when information leaves a trustworthy domain it remains protected,’ said Marks.