Integration at a distance

I have been inspired by the way in which the rail industry continues to work together to drive critical infrastructure works forward during these difficult and challenging times.

The industry has been instrumental in helping key workers get to and from work safely, moving freight around the country to deliver much needed PPE and other essential items, while still progressing vital programmes and upgrade works across the network.

Crossrail is just one of those major programmes that Siemens Mobility Limited is proud to be part of. On completion, the Elizabeth line will provide faster and more frequent trains across the 100km+ route, transforming journeys into and across London for passengers.

We are responsible for providing highly complex signalling and control systems for the central section of the line, and our dedicated project team has continued to support vital testing and integration works during Covid-19.

The Crossrail Integration Facility, designed and built by our Siemens Mobility team and currently located at our Chippenham site, is set up to perform exhaustive system testing and to identify and resolve technical issues using a mixture of real equipment and computer simulations of the railway and trains moving on it. This approach ensures that the Crossrail signalling system will be safe and reliable when we head into the Trial Running phase of the project, and ultimately for passengers on entry into service. 

In March, Crossrail brought all London project sites to a temporary Safe Stop unless there was a need to continue for operational safety reasons. This included the suspension of Dynamic Testing on the Elizabeth line.

Working in collaboration with Crossrail and industry partners, our Integration Facility has however continued to operate safely over the past weeks, to ensure the testing schedule remains on track to support the wider programme of works.

Where our Crossrail Integration Facility would usually welcome groups of teams, and sometimes up to 30 members of staff, at any one time, we have worked extremely hard with our industry partners to adapt our usual way of working to ensure we undertake key tasks in the safest way possible.

We have implemented measures to progress system testing ‘off-site’ with our engineers able to dial into the testing equipment remotely, accessing key strategic parts of the system from home. Equipment such as the Control Centre Workstations, which provide operators an overview of the railway, allowing them to control the timetable and schedule the movement of the trains, can now be accessed remotely. This means not only can our engineers view a simulation of the full railway line and stations, but perform all of the required tests as though they were working in the lab at Chippenham.

In addition to the manual integration tests that need engineers to interact with the system in person, the facility is designed to have scripted, repeatable, fully automated test cases that run across the full Crossrail signalling system. This approach allows us to both stress the system by simulating the simultaneous movement of many trains, testing the future full timetable and ultimately demonstrate the reliability of the system. These tests can now be started, monitored and analysed by engineers working from home, so that even when there is no-one present in the lab, the testing facility is still able to be used 24/7.

By reducing our on-site testing team significantly, down to just two people, those working on-site are able to do so at a safe distance from one another and in line with the Government’s social distancing guidelines, perform key tasks that cannot be completed remotely. The ability to adapt our way of working and progress system testing off-site has significantly reduced the impact of losing our on-site testing environment entirely during this time.

Following the Safe Stop, Crossrail has been working with its key contractors to safely re-start critical programme works, and as part of this, Dynamic Testing is due to continue in May. This will be a significant achievement and a testament to the collaboration between the delivery partners.

We are extremely proud to continue supporting this significant programme. As we move towards the ‘new normal’ and work with Government and industry to make plans for increased rail travel post-lockdown, we will continue to operate in the safest way possible to ensure our staff, customers, supply chain, others we work with, passengers and communities are safe. We look forward to continuing to work with Crossrail to support this exciting programme that will bring significant benefits to those travelling in London and the surrounding areas.