Jonathan Schofield

Said the following about Intelligent Infrastructure - Signalling team:

“I would like to nominate Network Rail’s Intelligent Infrastructure (II) Signalling team for designing and delivering the first National Relay Database for the railway.

There are 745,000 signalling relays across Britain’s rail network. Every one of them plays a critical role in making sure our trains run safely around all 20,000 miles of the rail network.

A small team within Network Rail’s Intelligent Infrastructure programme was tasked with a challenge: to digitise all 745,000 relays to create a single, safe, efficient and modern national signalling relay database. If this could be achieved, it would transform the management and maintenance of this safety critical asset.

It’s hard to convey the complexity of this challenge. All 745,000 relays were held in more than 80 separate systems – including excel spreadsheets – and held within local delivery units or depots scattered across the network. Up until this transformation, accessing data was time-consuming, difficult to manage and at risk of human error.

The II signalling team tasked with this vast undertaking, battened down the hatches and began crunching data and designing a digital system that would collate the data and allow teams in the routes the ability to see, use and exploit it.

This year marked a massive digital milestone for the industry when the team rolled out the new, fully digitised, National Relay Database app. This is a first for the railway, giving Network Rail a modern, digital database – uncluttered, paperless and centralised. Providing visibility for engineers to create a national servicing plan, it allows them to proactively plan maintenance and gain an understanding of the lifecycle of different types of relays.

The benefits of this stream-lined, up-to-date, digitised system gives our engineers:

• A single source of relay information accessible to all routes and regions, with increased visibility of in-service relays

• Ability to improve the quality of their relay information and the ability to collect relay information on site

• Greater transparency to reduce the risk of safety related failures across the network

Product owner Tony Wright, said: “Now, if we find a relay is failing, we can quickly locate all of those relays and set about replacing them. Over time it will allow us to build a history around each type of relay and better understand its lifecycle and when it should be replaced before a failure occurs.”

This dedicated team has managed this impressive digital transformation under challenging conditions. Working remotely during the pandemic they still managed to design and deliver on time and within budget.

It has been a privilege to watch this team begin a project from scratch, and, faced with this vast task, they have worked tirelessly to meet deadlines. Conducting training on-line and visiting teams in the regions to make sure the final app met the needs of frontline teams.

Ultimately, this marks another digital step towards running a safer more efficient railway that our passengers and freight customers can rely on.“