Asset Management of Signalling Systems

The railway as a complete system is a collection of assets working collectively to deliver the desired functionality. Asset Management is primarily concerned with ensuring optimum performance of the railway system by lifecycle management of the assets. While the concept of asset management is fairly well understood, the diversity and age of assets types on the UK railways create significant challenges to engineers responsible for the management of the railway system. Signalling and control systems have a significant safety and performance impact on the operation of the railway; therefore it is essential for a business led railway that the management of signalling assets is a core activity. In practice the railway industry and signalling engineers have been carrying out asset management activities and processes without the term necessarily being applied to the tasks being undertaken. Asset management is therefore not a new idea but a term to recognize good management process of which engineering is a major element. This paper is intended to give an overview of asset management of the signalling and control systems as presently undertaken by Network Rail.