Michelle Cartwright

Said the following about Stephen Cox:

“Stephen displays an outstanding commitment Alstom and a determination to improve and revolutionise signalling design within the industry and thereby address the Digital Railway objective of “introducing digital solutions in areas that will deliver the best value for money.” He continuously demonstrates an obvious dedication to cutting down costs and time by creating, developing and implementing cutting edge software, both conceived and created by himself. In this drive towards a Digital Railway he is a young but exceptionally talented team, who have benefited from Stephen’s teaching and leadership.

Stephen’s developments include SMARTcert and SmartBENCH; two revolutionary systems created to remove the time-consuming manual elements from signalling commissionings:

• SMARTcert is an automated tool which allows for multi-user access, a single source of information and process improvements to the paper and spreadsheet-based process whilst still complying with Network Rail’s Test & Commissioning standards.

• The SMARTBENCH tool now forms a key part in Alstom’s drive towards efficient delivery of digital ready signalling projects in the future. It has captured and documented 30 years of experience of manually producing signalling data, preserving it for the future. It also sets new standards for the capture of detailed signalling requirements and their traceability into the data. This will leave a positive legacy in the future for the next generation who are required to alter the data and will provide a digital basis for future changes in the network.

Stephen’s work, dedication and commitment, often in his personal time, is allowing signalling designers to be freed from the monotonous, repetitive and lengthy process of designing the basics of interlocking design, which will enable them to concentrate on the more complex, detailed and project specific design tasks, which I believe will inherently breed more efficient designers. Inevitably this digital process will produce cost savings in time and re-work cycles.

I have had the pleasure to work with Stephen and his team over the past few years and I am continually amazed by what he is developing! Without Stephen I believe such revolutionary changes to signalling design would be years away, he is a credit not only to Alstom but to the entire industry in its drive to create a Digital Railway and for this he truly deserves the industry’s recognition’“