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INFORMED SOURCES May 2006

Signalling – let the good times roll

After ten years of chaos, the signalling industry has an assured future – now all it has to do is deliver

For Britain’s signalling contractors, Railtrack was the equivalent of the seven plagues of Egypt, culminating in the inability to make a business case for signalling renewal. Add the inevitable love affair with alluring foreign technology and by the time Network Rail took over, the signalling industry was in crisis.

All this was faithfully recorded in this column. As were the findings of the Rail Regulator’s interim review which discovered that signalling renewals policy was such a mess that it needed a mini-review of its own.

And even that was so complex that ORR had to divide it into bite sized chunks, covering the medium and long term. All this, too, was reported here in great detail.

With the emerging Medium Term signalling review broadly endorsing Network Rail’s signalling renewals programme the November 2005 informed Sources (available in the Alycidon Rail on-line archive) decribed of how procurement of the programme would be managed. Table 2 is a reminder of how the work has been ‘segmented’.

Table 1

Preferred

In March Network Rail selected the preferred bidders for all except the South West Type ‘A’ contracts (Newsdesk April). At the time of going to press, a formal announcement of the successful contractors was still pending.

Table 2

However, Network Rail has provided detailed lists of the resignalling schemes which make up each of the five-year Type A framework contracts. These are shown in Table 2.

When the successful bidders are confirmed, the first contract in each territory will be signed. Assuming the contractor delivers, the other projects within each framework contract will follow on. For the first time since privatisation, contractors will have order books from the domestic main line infrastructure owner providing a fully funded five year work programme.
Start dates for the subsequent projects in each Framework Contract will depend on the capability of the contractor. Simon Kirby, Network Rail’s Director Major Projects, told me ‘It’s not a question of waiting for one to finish before we make the decision. They will go along at the rate contractors are pricing their programmes’.

Altogether this is a shrewd policy. First, the prospect of losing the five year workload in each framework contract is a powerful incentive to deliver on time and on budget. That’s the stick. But the prospect of getting the work in faster if you build up capability, in design, manufacture installation and commissioning, is the carrot. The first job advertisements are already out.

Detail

There are some points of note in the list. The first is that with in-house responsibility for system integration & construction management, Network Rail’s engineers have got what they wanted. Now they have to deliver schemes on time and with falling costs.

Westinghouse, having made much of its on-time commissioning of what work has been available from Network Rail is going to have to pedal very hard to keep up with three framework contracts on the go simultaneously. And, don’t forget, in parallel the company is responsible for resignalling the Underground’s Victoria Line and the sub-surface lines for Metronet.
Note, too, that the South East Territory has, sensibly, been split into North and South of the Thames. In the North, Alstom, in partnership with Balfour Beatty, has just two schemes, not a lot of work for a company which as GEC General Signal was historically one of the ‘big two’ in British signalling.

South of the Thames it looks as though Kent is going to be the only territory with non-SSI compatible interlockings. Siemens, which is a long standing British company (the eponymous Wernher founded his first business in the UK during Victoria’s reign, before setting up again in Germany) had the background to fight its SIMIS-W Computer Based Interlocking through the UK acceptance process with the truncated Dorset coast scheme and is now pressing on with Portsmouth. Phase 1 was completed on time and to budget and Phase 2 was due to be commissioned over Easter.
Otherwise SSI rules, most probably in its fourth generation CBI incarnations which have the advantage of being both backwards compatible with ‘pure’ SSI trackside equipment and accommodates UK signalling principles.

Significantly, presenting the latest Network Rail business plan early in April Network Rail Chief Executive John Armitt was outspoken on the problems which have delayed the Crewe-Cheadle Hulme resignalling with Ansaldo’s ACC CBI.
According to Mr Armitt there had been ‘770 software compatibility errors’ which, when he was speaking on 4 April were down to 127. When these were all sorted, the installation would have to be retested, a task he described, as ‘balls-aching’, a technical phrase engineers in the readership will understand.

At Basingstoke, the resignalling contract was initially excpected to go to Alstom. But as this column was going to press Atkins announced that they had taken over the contract, worth over £50 million. According to Informed Sources the Alstom was not to blame. The fault lay in the GRIP process.

Gap

Readers will have noted that Table 2 omits any reference to the West Coast Main Line. This is a subject of some tension within Network Rail.

Four ongoing resignalling schemes remain under the control of the West Coast Route Modernisation team. They are Nuneaton, the Trent Valley quadrupling, Rugby remodelling and Bletchley. The invitation to tender for the Trent Valley contract is imminent.

While these are outside the new strategy Simon Kirby claims that ‘Their plan is fully linked into the National Plan’, with integrated programmes for commissioning, testing and contractor resources. ‘All of the contracts are being let on the same basis of the Type a contracts we are letting. The only real difference is that the management is through a different wing of the organisation’, he added.

That is as maybe. Informed Sources suggest that contractors are being approached to start detailed design before scheme plans have been signed off. And the sequence for these four contracts is also understood to be still under consideration.
Certainly those in the Black Tower can’t wait to bring the WCML back within the Territory management structure. An early example is expected to be the Crewe Area Resignalling, currently at GRIP (Guide to Railway Investment Projects) Stage 1 (Output Definition).

Resignalling of the Slough-Swindon-Thames Valley corridor will follows, although this has yet to enter the GRIP process. Since the life cycle of a signalling project is typically five years, these schemes will come to fruition in the next five year Control Period which starts on 1 April 2009.

Control

Network Rail’s strategy is to link the Type E control centre contracts with the individual schemes in each Type A framework contract. There is a generic national application within which contractors are bidding against site specific requirements.

For example, in the West Midlands, as the Type A contracts are commissioned they will come under the control of a new Type E control centre. This will be housed in the building at Saltley originally intended to control the southern end of the West Coast Main Line. Type B signalling renewal schemes in the West Midlands, such as Coventry, will also transfer to Saltley.

Looking ahead to the end of CP4 in 2014, Network Rail says that it has more than 850 signalling projects in its work-bank. This includes ‘over 30’ Type A major signalling projects and 70 Type B renewals schemes.

There are around 30 Schemes in Table 2, but remember that the dividing line between Type A and Type B is set an a nominal 150-200 Signalling Equivalent Units (SEU). This means that a ‘big’ Type B is substantial in signalling terms.
And, finally, note that the intials ERTMS have not appeared in this piece. But let’s stick with the good news for this issue

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