INFORMED SOURCES e-Preview May 2014
Signalling seems to be losing its way at the moment, with planned work being cancelled on a regular basis and major programmes hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons. This month’s column features two areas of current concern.
Traffic Management procurement descending to farce.
Review validates TMS procurement
Multiple challenges in ICEC replacement franchise
ICEC bidding costs up by 30% on West Coast
Social media – more than tweets
Pragmatic approach to FGW and SWT extension agreements.
As you read in last month’s e-Preview, five years after Network Rail started procurement of the much-vaunted traffic Management System (TMS) there will be two, not three, ‘First Deployment’ pilot schemes and both will be awarded to Thales. The three shortlisted bidders were told late on Friday 28 February and the outcome was common knowledge the following Monday.But as I write the information blackout on the contract is in its 48th day. This may be because some of the senior folk associated with the project at NR are unhappy with the result.
Anyway, in the column I revisit the TMS procurement process. I also have some details of the two First Deployment Schemes going ahead. The first will see Thameside signalling and TOC Control transferred from Upminster IECC to Romford Rail Operating Centre (ROC). Current plans are that it will be commissioned during a blockade over Christmas 2015.
Cardiff is a mixed bag. Four Siemens (was Invensys) Westcad work stations will be upgraded to provide full Traffic Management locally. In parallel the South Wales area, out to Haverford West and Milton Haven, will gain some TM facilities.
Mystery
Why NR plans to give two pilot schemes to the same supplier is a mystery. Even dual sourcing was not considered to provide enough competition in the case of Modular Signalling. A wag at the March Fourth Friday Club suggested that it could be based on the assumption that if one TMS pilot scheme doesn’t work the other may turn up trumps.
And note the implication that having ‘travelled across the world to review Traffic Management products against our vision’, and spent £20 million helping the three best prospects develop their trial offices, NR considers only one manufacturer to be worth a trial. Or rather two trials.
RIF
Mention of dual sourcing brings us to another TMS procurement development that just missed the column. According to the Integrated Work Schedule on NR’s web site, the company is due to award a contract – valued at £10-25 million - for the development of a Remote Interlocking Interface (RIF).
Now this clearly doesn’t make sense, because a RIF is a straightforward piece of kit. You would be hard pressed to spend £2.5 million let alone £25 million developing one.
My theory is that the ‘development’ contract also includes supply of 80 or 90 RIFs to support the TMS programme. But that doesn’t compute either – well not in the real world.
Since last November, a commercially developed RIF has been allowing NR’s Edinburgh ROC to control Solid State Interlockings in the former Cowlairs signal box equipment room outside Glasgow. So why pay to reinvent the wheel? I’m waiting for a clarification on this contract too.
TMS procurement – by the book
Back in the December 2013, I reported that Network Rail’s then Chief Executive Sir David Higgins had promised to provide a copy of the internal review of the company’s TMS procurement to the Commons Transport Committee. In its questioning the Committee had raised complaints by DeltaRail about the procurement and the company’s counter proposal, including a claimed £1 billion saving.
Now that the review has been published it is clear that, given the situation at the time, DeltaRail’s exclusion was entirely justified. Under the OJEU Notice in June 2009, the TMS tender was broken down into four functional lots, plus a fifth lot focusing on systems integration.
DeltaRail was eliminated at the first of two Pre-Qualification stages in June 2011 because its bid covered only three of the lots in the ITT. In addition, only companies with proven TM systems in service were eligible for selection and, at that time, DeltaRail was offering IECC classic and plain vanilla ARS.
Since then DeltaRail has introduced the upgraded Scalable version of its IECC which, says the Review, was presented to NR in May 2013 and I saw demonstrated earlier this year. The Review observes that it ‘is still conceptual in part with no proven TMS currently in operation for review’. And it still does not provide a solution to all five lots in the ITT.
This seems to me like a classic case of big projects being unable to cope with disruptive technical change outside their silos. The report’s final conclusion ‘for Management consideration’ is itself a classic of silo mentality.
It reads: ‘NR is continuing engagement with the current preferred suppliers and has not discussed DR with the current suppliers as there is a risk of unsettling (them) and their subsequent commitment. Some (possibly all) are aware since the Transport Select Committee raised DR’s proposal with the NR Chief Executive.’
Or they might even have read e-Preview! Priceless.
Sub-Surface Lines resignalling – the LU view.
On 12 March London’s Transport Commissioner Sir Peter Hendy and London Underground Managing Director Mike Brown had one of their regular sessions before the London Assembly’s Transport Committee. When it came to the Sub-Surface Lines (SSL) Automatic Train Control (ATC) contract cancellation, Mike Brown’s answers were certainly enlightening.
First off, the Committee asked whether the re-signalling was still expected to be completed by December 2018 and whether that timescale was realistic? Mr Brown confirmed that December 2018 was still the aim, with the caveat ‘I've never said I'll sort of die in a ditch over the date’. On the other hand TfL still intends to ‘keep, if you like, the feet to the fire of these potential bidders in terms of the 2018 date’.
Does TfL really believe that, having seen Thales struggle initially on Jubilee Line ATC (two years late) and Bombardier fall flat on their face on SSL, that suppliers will put their feet anywhere near a high temperature heat source in the face of such potential reputational risk? The problem will be getting someone, other than Thales, to bid.
Massive
However, the real shock/horror came with Mike Brown’s claim that carrying on with the contract while pretending ‘there wasn't a real problem right now’ would have involved a ‘massive spiralling increase in cost’ and a disruptive implementation ‘that would have made the Jubilee Line commissioning look like a walk in the park’. He added ‘the contractor wasn't going to deliver this signalling, if at all, certainly not by the date and nowhere close to the cost that was originally envisaged. It just wasn't going to happen’.
Questioned on the additional costs incurred by the cancellation and retendering Mr Brown told the committee , ‘the only thing I would say to you is that whatever quantum we are talking about it is absolutely infinitesimally small compared with the additional cost we would have incurred had we stuck with this contract. No doubt’.
Transcribing the Assembly hearing what struck me was that LU seems to regard this vital £354 million project, which went from total confidence in delivery to cancellation in nine months, as a case of ‘stuff happens’.
Franchise bidding costs still rising
On 21 March the Department for Transport released the Invitation to Tender (ITT) for the replacement Intercity East Coast franchise. And in terms of both bidding and subsequently managing the franchise, ICEC is a beast.
I won’t go into the detail here, but it is worth flagging up the resources the three bidders –Stagecoach/Virgin, Keolis/Eurostar and First Group will have to deploy. And note that these were the only expressions of interest received.
Working timetables have to be produced for two Train Service Requirements (TSR). Obviously there is May 2020 IEP timetable, with the new fleet of Hitachi Super Express Trains (TSR2). But there is also TSR1 for the period leading up to the change. Given the national shortage of timetabling staff, and NR’s depleted team following the unwillingness of some staff to move to Milton Keynes, three bidders, each producing two WTT – not to mention interfacing with Thameslink’s new Great Northern Timetable from December 2018, seems a bit profligate.
By chance, there was a media briefing with Rail Executive Director General Clare Moriarty at the DfT Rail Industry Day on 9 April and I used my question to raise this issue. Her view is that ‘if we said don’t bother about anything until TSR2 we’d be saying to the travelling public “nothing changes until 2019”’.
Which is very much in the historic East Coast spirit of continuous improvement. But the way track access works it is unlikely that a new timetable would come in before December 2016. Surely the answer is proposals to tweak the existing timetable rather that three recasts.
And it’s not only timetables. After the confusion over the evaluation of modelled financial forecasts, which contributed to the cancellation of the Intercity West Coast franchise competition, DfT is determined to nail things down this time. This is reflected in the detailed modelling required from bidders.
Does all this matter? Well, according to Informed Sources, ICEC bid teams are about 30% larger than those for the West Coast competition. As a result, bidding costs continue their inexorable climb. I feel a new graph coming on.
Monitoring the Twittersphere
Something else I must get round to writing is a review of the way the Train Operating Companies have adopted social media. I ‘follow’ many of the TOCs’ Twitter feeds, as well as ‘my’ local @FirstCC, and it is fascinating to see the way the service is evolving.
But, forget the value to passengers, here is a potential source of industry ‘big data’. As the Office of Rail Regulation pointed out when it published its latest quarterly complaints survey in March, ‘the current methodology does not capture complaints received through social media platforms. ORR is exploring ways to include complaints through social media in the future and we are keen to hear views on raising concerns through social media’.
Well, three weeks earlier I had been given a demonstration of just what ORR has in mind. Having played with DeltaRail’s Traffic Management System demonstration office, they said ‘come and see this’.
‘This’ was the research programme analysing TOCs’ twitter traffic. It had been running for just over three months and was already producing some interesting results.
What the system does is derive passenger sentiment by analysing the content of tweets as a ‘word cloud’. Thus, when services are disrupted the proportion of negative sentiment increases.
And by observing the changing sentiment in the word cloud in real time, you can see the impact of a service disruption building up. I’ve got some screen grabs showing this and other results.
Pre-empting the ORR requirement, DeltaRail gave me a graph combining three ‘satisfaction’ surveys - the National Passenger Survey, the latest Which? Magazine annual survey and their Twitter analysis.
Each survey is based on a very different approach. But I think you will find the comparison interesting.
Franchise extension agreements continue.
On the wall in front of me as I write is the latest version of DfT’s ‘Rail franchise schedule’. Released at the Rail Industry Day, it shows the timetable for extending and replacing all the English franchises out to the end of 2022.
This is, effectively, the first annual update of the schedule and it incorporates two changes that reflect the pragmatic approach adopted by Interim Franchise Director Peter Wilkinson. The first will be no surprise to readers.
South West Trains’ existing franchise is due to run until February 2017. The 2013 Schedule showed a Direct Award agreement then taking the franchise through to replacement in April 2019.
But Tim Shoveller, Chief Executive of the SWT/Network Rail Alliance, and his team are storming ahead with their programme to increase capacity under the High Level Output Specification for Control Period 5 which ends on 31 March 2019. So in January DfT published a Prior Information Notice (PIN) for a Direct Award running from January 2015 to March 2019 ‘to align with the Network Rail Control Period’. Instead of cut and pasting the HLOS changes into the existing franchising agreement, the Direct Award means starting with a new agreement linked to the proposed upgrades.
A PIN has also been issued for the Great Western Franchise. It says that DfT is considering whether to follow the current Direct Award with a second agreement of up to five years which could ‘facilitate wider government rail projects’.
This is something I have been banging on about for some time. Letting a replacement franchisee in 2016 would risk a change of ownership at the height of the Great Western Route Modernisation. Sensibly, DfT is ‘exploring’ with the ‘supply chain’ the viability and any advantages of a notional five year Direct Award which would cover completion of both the GWRM and Crossrail. Simples.
Roger’s Blog
We had two guests of honour at the April Fourth Friday Club. Our guest speaker was Patrick Hallgate, Great Western Route Managing Director. He was joined by another Great Western man – and one of my heroes - Phillip Rees.
One of the first tasks when I joined Modern Railways in 1976 was to write the bulk of our feature marking the launch of the Great Western InterCity 125 services. This involved much research, including an interview with the Regional Chief Civil Engine responsible for the track upgrades.
Mr Rees could not have been kinder and more patient with a mechanical engineer who had just come back to the industry after a 10 year gap. As I left, he showed me Brunel’s walking stick cum 7ft ¼ in track gauge, which he held as the 14th engineer in succession to IKB.
It was the start of a friendship that has continued after his retirement, with letters commenting on articles I have written or should have written. And now here was the man himself, in fine fettle, when I arrived at the Paddington Hilton venue. There was time for a chat and some reminiscence. Afterwards Tony Miles took some cracking photos of Phillip and Patrick in the station with an IC125 in the background.
A couple of weeks back I had a fascinating session with a couple of academics from the University Of Exeter Business School around the topic of disruptive technologies in the railways. I’m not sure how much they learned from me, but I found it a useful and informative hour or so well spent.
Next day, I had been looking forward to finding out about how the Internet of Everything was affecting railways, only to cancel at the last minute when DfT invited the railway trade press to the opening speeches at the latest Rail Industry Day, followed by a 20 minute Q&A session with Clare Moriarty.
On arrival at the venue we were corralled by our press minders who, I sensed, had a remit to keep us away from the delegates. So, a bit like Lenin is his sealed train to St Petersburg, we were taken up to the gallery to observe the proceedings. Unfortunately there weren’t any lights which made note taking difficult until a helpful PR man used the torch app on his smartphone to provide a kindly light amidst the encircling gloom.
After some pretty anodyne speeches we went to a conference room where there was time to put one question each to Clare. My Railway Gazette/RBI colleague Nick Kingsley was present so we were able to double-team and get more value out of the session.
On not entirely unrelated transport matters, last week Mrs F and I had a day out in London and needed to get from the Fashion & Textile Museum near London Bridge to Covent Garden. It was a beautiful day so we took the Thames Clipper river bus. While a bit pricey, it ran to time and the views along the river were spectacular.
There was a disappointing lack of flying spray as we jollied along but I am told they can turn up the taps on what sounded like some pretty muscular diesels east of Tower Bridge.
Next month is dominated by Infrarail. I plan to be there for the opening day (20 May) tramping the aisles and catching up with technical developments. Offers of refreshments will be thankfully accepted! And, as I always say, if you see me don’t be put off by the frown, that’s my default concentration facial setting. Do say hello and perhaps even become an Informed Source.
Hope to see you there.
Roger