REGISTER

Hugh Hunter

MSc MBCS MIRSE

Systems Assurance Manager, Boleh Consulting

We have all suffered railway services being delayed or cancelled, and read about railway systems and operational services being criticised for being unreliable. In his paper, Alex Landex [1] states that delays in a railway network are one of the biggest problems in the daily operation of a railway company, and to deal with this issue attention to transit efficiency and reliability is increasing.

With regards to the safety aspect of railways, Paul Munn [2] in his paper points out that his company PMSC have collected statistics on railway accidents worldwide and reports that since 1842 there have been 89 major accidents where over 100 people have been killed. He further emphasises that 60% of accidents identified are caused by human failures, and that after investigations a significant number of these accidents are found to have been preventable. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report [17] provides railway safety occurrence data between the 1st July 2002 and the 30th June 2012, and indicates that during this period, in Australia there have been 350 fatalities and 160 running line collisions. Wikipedia [3] provides a worldwide statistical view on railway safety, providing statistics related to accidents, including the classification of accidents by causes and contributory factors.

The problems of reliability and safety of the railway operations are often caused by:

• Lack or inadequate consideration of RAM and system safety requirements early in the systems lifecycle.
• Lack or inadequate RAM and safety analyses being performed early and progressively through the systems lifecycle.
• Lack of assurance that the technical, RAM and safety requirements have been addressed.

As railway systems around the world become larger and far more complex, emphasis is being applied to design and deliver solutions that integrate systems assurance into the delivery program to deal with the aforementioned issues.

This paper introduces the topic of systems assurance for railway projects and provides an example of how this is done on a large-scale rail project in the Middle East.