The challenges of modernising the railway – an Asset Management perspective
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Abstract
The railway sector is very traditional and has a very strong risk averse culture due to its history and nature. These facts make change and modernisation particularly challenging, and they are often identified as the key reasons for the industry to be behind others when it comes to digitisation and innovation. The East West Rail project is looking to adopt a fresh approach that embraces innovation and new technologies, using them to overcome some of the challenges that the industry faces. The ability to do this is fundamental for EWR to achieve its objectives. For Asset Management there are three main areas where technology can change the traditional approach. The first one is around using BIM and Digital Twin to support the delivery of major infrastructure projects on time and on budget. The second is around data capture and exchange of information, ensuring that these processes are streamlined and possibly automated, improving data quality. The third one is around legacy assets and business processes and systems and how these can be digitised and integrated to enable quicker and improved decision-making. This session aims to be provocative and to launch a challenge to the BIM and blockchain communities to identify how these technologies could be adopted by the railway sector and used to resolve some of the challenges in an efficient manner.
Keywords
East West Rail Project, Asset Management, Digital Twin, Data & Information management.
