Andrew Love

Said the following about 4 Line Modernisation Team:

“SNC-Lavalin Rail & Transit supply a range of resources to London Underground’s (LU’s) Four-Line Modernisation (4LM) programme - one of the largest metro resignalling projects in the world, which will install Thales’ Seltrac CBTC (Communication Based Train Control) system on one of the most complex metro networks in the world to support one of the highest-intensity services on the world.

Led by Ken Chan (SNC-Lavalin’s Head of CBTC Technologies) the team delivers:

• Programme Engineering Management

• System Management Centre Engineering

• Development of Interoperability solutions

• System Design acceptance and change control

• Hardware Acceptance

• Site Operating Rules Derivation

• Network Rail (NR) Operational / Technical Interface Engineering

• Systems Discipline Engineering

This team brings the 4LM project a wealth of practical experience from similar Seltrac installations around the world, including:

• Development of the Seltrac system and initial deployments in the 1980s

• Maintenance of similar Seltrac systems (including the Olympic-class performance of the DLR during the 2012 London games)

• Incident investigation on similar Seltrac Systems

• Training and coaching maintainers for similar Seltrac systems (including the rolling stock maintainers for London’s Northern Line)

• Extension of similar Seltrac systems (including the Evergreen line in Vancouver)

• Performance enhancement and resilience optimisation of similar Seltrac systems and their supporting infrastructure (power supplies, communications networks etc)

The team also supply experience of:

• Other comparable train control technologies - allowing comparisons to be made and lessons learned from how others have solved similar problems

• LU’s legacy signalling technologies - ensuring a sound understanding of the starting point for the journey to new technology. Several members of the team have passed Module 2 (“Signalling the Layout”) of the IRSE’s (Institution of Railway Signal Engineers) Professional Examination using LU signalling principles - as well as giving them a good understanding of LU’s legacy systems, this enables them to understand how new signalling technologies create capacity from first principles.

• LU’s processes and procedures - ensuring that the project can be delivered in line with the client’s expectations without requiring high levels of supervision.

• Integrating with NR operational practices and infrastructure - assisting with enabling operation on NR trains over LU infrastructure and NR trains over LU infrastructure.

To enable the client to receive an efficient, integrated service, the team collaborate and among themselves and their 4LM programme colleagues employed by LU or by co-suppliers in order to share their knowledge and develop proposals to solve the client’s challenges. Where they require further guidance, they can consult with domain experts in the wider SNC-Lavalin Rail & Transit organisation, with the aim of bringing the client solutions rather than problems. Through this approach the team has enabled consensus to be reached on a wide range of operational and technical issues so that the system supplier has a clear scope to deliver, reducing the risk of this programme slipping or incurring additional costs.

The client has been delighted by the approach and the delivery of this team; feedback received has included that the team “just gets on with things”, was “fantastic from both an operational and technical point of view” and was “really good at handling people”.“