UK: Following successful trials, geofencing technology company Tended has been granted a national deviation to the Rail Industry Rule Book by RSSB’s Traffic Operation & Management Standards Committee, enabling the use of its virtual worksite marker boards for all on-track-plant-only possessions.
Tended estimates that wider adoption could provide over £23m in annual cost savings, while enhancing operational resilience and minimising passenger disruption.
The technology has been developed by Tended, Network Rail’s Technical Authority and Onwave to replace the traditional manual placement of physical boards used to define worksite limits. Tended’s digital system creates geofenced worksite limits in minutes, with in-cab devices alerting vehicle drivers as they approach worksite boundaries. This removes the need for workers to access the infrastructure to place physical marker boards, eliminates placement errors and significantly reduces worksite set-up and tear-down time.
Trials with Siemens Mobility and Network Rail on the East Coast Main Line found:
- 50 min was saved by removing manual marker board placement and recovery;
- the need for 20 phone calls was removed, freeing up time to focus on more safety-critical tasks;
- a 17% increase in available time within the possession window;
- a reduction in overrun time to 18 min from a possible 68 min with an associated estimated £130 000+ cost saving in a single shift.
‘This national deviation is a landmark moment for the industry’, said Phil Sadgrove, Senior Implementation Manager and programme lead for virtual worksite marker boards at Tended, on December 2. ‘For the first time, we can replace a long-standing manual process with a digital solution that is faster, safer and far more reliable. The results on the East Coast Main Line, and our work with Siemens Mobility and Network Rail East Coast, has shown just how transformative virtual worksite marker boards can be. We’re proud to be leading this innovation and excited to see the benefits now being made available across the whole network.’
