Getting the Transpennine rail Route’s digital upgrade on track

Ask any regular British rail commuter about the trains, and they will scoff that they are “always late”. In fact, figures from Finder.com reveal that around 12% of British trains are delayed by more than five minutes every year.

But it isn’t just the trains themselves that are running behind. In terms of innovation, the UK rail industry is way off track compared with several other sectors. That was the view shared by BAM Nuttall’s digital construction specialist Catherine Dodds during a recent presentation at the Digital Construction Week in London.

“Considering we have a 7% GPD share, that’s quite worrying,” she warned.

The civil engineer turned digital expert explained to delegates attending the event at London’s ExCel that British rail’s innovation woes were one of the reasons why she decided to join the Transpennine Route Upgrade project back in 2019, “because it’s innovation and that’s what I’m all about”.

The Department for Transport first set out plans to electrify the 70-mile long Transpennine route in 2011 when the upgrade was forecast to cost just shy of £290 million. It connects Manchester in the UK’s northwest with cities such as Leeds and York in the UK’s northeast, via the Pennines mountain range.

A decade later, the upgrade was formally made part of the UK Government’s £96 billion Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) when it was then dubbed the largest single rail investment ever made by a UK government.

Since launch, the project has built three high-speed lines and upgraded and electrified a handful of existing lines.

“So a little bit about the project,” Dodds headed. It covers Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York, with 23 stations, nearly 30 level crossings and six miles of tunnels.

To put the project into perspective, within 200 meters there’s over 75,000 residents, 11,000 businesses and 27 members of parliament – that’s almost 5% of the entire House of Commons.

According to Dodds, the electrification of the route is set to improve capacity on the lines, increase reliability and services, reduce journey times and create an improved train fleet.

“The project also intends to bring passengers greener trains that run on a better, cleaner and more reliable railway,” – something all industries are hot on at the minute, but some failing to do so well at.

The next stop is digital

So why go digital? A fair question when 43% of construction workers had no digital capabilities prior to Covid-19, according to a global survey by Bentley Systems.

Dodds outlined five core benefits to moving to digital solutions: “generally speaking – convenience, speed, cost, environment and accuracy”.

“We need to look at those industries at the top, look at the digital processes they’ve got in place to learn from and implement new systems on our own.”

During her thirty minute session the digital expert touched on a number of achievements from the decade long project, some which have materialised already and others which can be expected when it reaches completion.

“The site workers are installing extra railway lines and a digital system across the route, stations and tracking remodeling is taking place, and station upgrades including accessibility improvements,” said Dodds.

But these developments didn’t happen after a few suggestions in a meeting room, they were all tightly sewn into TRU’s digital strategy.

According to Dodds, when she’s looking to implement innovative tools in the project she asks herself, “people; is there a smarter way we can onboard new starters?” And if there is “we’ll implement a digital solution”.

TRU uses a BIM CAVE (computer-aided virtual environment) which allows project workers to create an immersive 360-degree environment to plan future projects, but also to train fresh meat.

New starters are placed into a site-like environment so they can get a feel of what it’s like to be out on site before they’re physically out on site, which at the same time ticks that all important health and safety box.

“Quality; is there a smarter way we can capture our quality records on site?” Yes, Dodds said, through a BIM 360 field.

“You’re not having to rely on your engineers filling out a paper copy then take it back to the office to get it signed off,” she explained. “It’s fully auditable so every time an amendments made it’s captured with the date and time.” And it can also be used for the engineer’s site diaries to create a specific checklist that can be accessed all in one place.

But if firms are looking to digitise anything, Dodds said it’s crucial they prioritise employee records.

If the fleet of organisations in the project considered a misfiling rate of 1%, it would lead to over 50,00 lost records each year – “It doesn’t bare thinking about the state that we’d be in after ten years if we didn’t act to mitigate these risks with a digital solution.”

Innovation, innovation, innovation

Innovation in the rail industry has been a key focus for the UK in recent years. In 2022 the UK Government pledged £7.6 million for rail innovation to fund projects creating cutting-edge ideas that would improve rail travel whilst also decarbonise the network.

The then rail minister Wendy Morton said it’s key the UK works to take these new visions from the drawing board into existence, but sometimes the process of executing these visions can be costly from the slog of an idea passing through multiple people until it reaches decision makers.

“So out first port of call was to implement a collaboration hub,” said Dodds.

“It would be a central location for when the work is being completed on site. Everyone who needs to be responsible for making decisions gathers and the decisions can be made quickly, effectively and sent back to the site teams without being passed from one person to another.”

Within the hub there are six touch screens connected to live streamed cameras on the route which allow decision makers to see exactly what’s going on in real-time.

When the site teams are out completing the work they also have an app they use to confirm the actual works, the planned works and the time that they’ve been completed. The information is then fed back to the collaboration hub which gives decision makers the ability to get the information first time and act on it.

“It helps mitigate the risks to the project because you’re not delaying things should an issue arise,” said Dodds.

TRU has also implemented 4D logistic planning which is done months in advance of the work commencing. It improves communication and reduces misunderstanding between the programme and the site teams that are going to deliver the work, “again helping mitigate any risk, improving safety awareness and minimising disputes”.

The project has created a standard model for 4D planning made up of three different levels of detail. Level one, which offers the most basic form – similar to a Google Maps image, which the project uses when conversations are beginning to happen. Level two focuses more on one specific work area incorporating the 3D model. And then finally level three, “our most advanced level,” according to Dodds, “this includes all the lifting operations, traffic management, any logistics works, it’s got everything on there.”

The site managers can access information months in advance of the programme commencing, so should an issue arrive in level one, it’s then able to be changed in enough time to recreate the simulations for the physical works.

“It’s what we’re all about, building things digitally before we then go and build them out on site,” Dodds enthused.

HoloBuilder is a cloud based data capturing tool that the project also uses to give people eyes out on site that might not be able to get there. Construction workers use a 360 degree camera to take photos of the works and then send it back to colleagues on the team.

“So if your designer lives 200 miles away from the site, you can capture these images and send them without them having to make a 400-mile-round trip.

“The other beauty of it is you can also do a direct comparison, so you can take photos as often as you like and go back and do a split screen direct 360 degree comparison.

“We’re also trialing augmented reality, but it’s not something that you’d take as gospel.”