Public procurement notice: Periodic Indicative Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2018-07-04
Buyer: Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 31000000 | 34000000 | 38000000 | 48000000 | 72000000

Technical requirements: Proof of Concept Study on Trainborne monitoring of Track Circuits for acquisition of preventive fault data
Network Rail is seeking to review the market to understand potential suppliers and solutions, for asset monitoring services. This PIN notice seeks to identify potentially suppliers and gather information on potential products that may meet its requirements for a project to deliver against the below deliverables.
Proof of concept study on Trainborne monitoring of track circuits for acquisition of preventive fault data.
Network Rail is seeking to review the market to understand potential suppliers and solutions, for asset monitoring services. This PIN notice seeks to identify potentially suppliers and gather information on potential products that may meet its requirements for a project to deliver against the below deliverables.
With the Digital Railway vision for the future railway, there is a requirement to install more wayside assets to support its aims. This leads to the issue of more assets to maintain whilst capacity to maintain is at its most constrained, such asset like Track Circuits, there are different categories of these assets,AC, DC, REED etc.Coupled with the need for Network Rail to operate in a more commercially astute and cost conscious way as a business, a leaner approach is needed to maintain the new assets revolving around pinpointing essential preventative maintenance and creating a fix before failure culture within Maintenance.In order to facilitate this, an efficient method of capturing useable and accurate data from the new assets is needed.Studying the rail industry market, it is apparent that there are emerging technologies that can be installed onto a train and have the capability of monitoring assets in real time as a train completes its intended journey. Many European railways have already deployed these systems on their measurement trains and utilise the data captured to preventatively maintain their track circuits. SNCF, Eurotunnel, Infrabel, Eurailscout and Luxembourg rail are examples of current real life applications of these technologies. Network Rail has identified that that the track circuit monitoring systems currently employed in Europe could potentially provide the technological solution for the UK rail application. this study may also explore other assets in addition to the ones listed above if they fall within the capability of the technology present.This invitation is seeking to solicit enquiries for a proof of concept trial that would test the technology currently being used in Europe to ascertain its suitability for the UK rail market and potentially lead to a roll out across the business.
The scope of works is to undertake R&D activities through a trial of the technology to investigate the opportunity to employ the solution to the UK rail market for trainborne asset health monitoring, which will advance the Technology Readiness Level from TRL 3 to TRL 6.
This work is targeted to explore the feasibility of using track circuits, other assets may apply monitoring equipment to analyse the health of Network Rail’s deployed assets to provide data that will allow us to preventatively maintain and replace these assets before the point of failure. Therefore, a system to provide data which will give an early warning of failure is required.This will lead to a more efficient maintenance regime, as we will be able to plan renewals with expected failures as opposed to the current fix on failure which requires manpower to be deployed for each asset that fails.Further to this, by reducing the number of times we deploy maintenance teams to site, we will increase the safety of our frontline maintenance teams.
Additional requirement information To note.New Measurement Train power cars,43013 and 43014 shall be used in the trial. Required Fitment Timescales 23-29.9.2018. Reeds, T121 and DC track circuits monitoring capability. 20U rack space available on train.Receiver and transmitter must not exceed 2200m W x 1200mm D by 100mm H Must work in unattended mode Ability to Geo-tag measurements and report real time. Must be compatible with analogue CAT7 cabling. A detailed plan for extracting and evaluating the data captured during the trial period need to be given