East West Rail selects AIMS

East West Rail partners with datb for its Asset Information requirements

When East West Rail (EWR) completes in the 2020s, it won't be the first time the two cities of Oxford and Cambridge have been connected by rail. The Varsity Line ran between the two cities for over a hundred years between 1851 and 1967 carrying both freight and passengers.

As is being done today, the line was originally opened in phases: the Oxford-Bedford section and the Bletchley-Bedford section opened in 1846 with the Bedford-Cambridge section following in 1851.

Our work with EWR is helping them to deliver this challenging multi-phase project.

The Project

East West Rail are using datb’s AIMS (Asset Information Management System) as their asset register and as the core component of their CDE (Common Data Environment).

The data environment is complex, holding structured and unstructured data, 3D models and geospatial data. The CDE provides a common view across these disparate data sets.

As is the case with most large infrastructure projects, construction work will be undertaken in lots by numerous contractors. As engineering partners come and go throughout the lifecycle of the project, it is essential that East West Rail retains control of the overall data environment and the standards that are used to ensure its quality.

datb is working with the technical team to ensure that there is one version of the truth, maintained across multiple data types and contractors.

Availability of a single, coherent set of asset information is vital during the design and construction phases to enable informed decisions and monitoring of progress. It will be critical as built assets move into service, when engineering and maintenance teams will be responsible for the operation of the railway.

AIMS' flexibility, open data standards and ease of integration allow EWR to build their common data environment incrementally, with new functionality being delivered by the integration of best-of-breed or bespoke components appropriate to EWR’s needs as the programme evolves.

In contrast to alternative approaches, AIMS allows instant delivery of core asset information capability and swift iterative delivery of essential additional functionality as it is required.

As AIMS is developed on our leading-edge low code development platform, our development team were able to quickly build and implement some specific enhancements over and above the standard functionality. These included:

1. A reconfiguration of the existing Land Access Management system to meet EWR land access / survey scheduling requirements
2. Single sign-on was enabled to allow EWR and supply chain users to access all systems within the CDE via a single authentication mechanism
3. Client specific integrations were implemented which included Salesforce, SAP and ESRI (to meet GIS mapping of asset information requirements)

Why did they choose to partner with datb?

datb has significant experience working in asset-intensive industries (including High Speed 2) and our demonstrable capabilities in the creation and integration of sophisticated cloud-hosted applications led to our success in the tendering process.

The project is working to MDM (Master Data Management) principles which is a discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared master data assets. Master data is the consistent and uniform set of identifiers and extended attributes that describes the core entities of the enterprise including customers, prospects, citizens, suppliers, sites, hierarchies and chart of accounts. datb's experience in similar programmes of work meant that we could hit the ground running.

What the customer said

"Unlike other network operators we don’t have loads of legacy data to think about.  We set up a project (Enabling System Architecture) that will deliver an integrated systems architecture to serve the needs of the company.  We are creating a Common Data Environment (CDE) which staff members and partners can work within, or federate data into.

This environment needs to be data agnostic providing a data model that describes the configuration of the systems that we are building.  Eventually this will become a Digital Twin of the infrastructure which, amongst other things, will allow them to monitor asset condition in real time.

The project is challenging as it is a “standing start”, but on the other hand there is no real legacy so we can build exactly what we need without having to worry about legacy applications and data sets.”

Below: the network diagram for East West Rail:

 

Why AIMS?

AIMS is a versatile and flexible asset register for large infrastructure projects, enabling managed and audited sharing of data between project owner and delivery partners.

With AIMS you can:

• Configure and manage different sets of asset classes such as civils, M&E, property, vehicles
• Define and visualise hierarchical and networked relationships between asset types
• Support complex workflows such as approvals, access management, risk assessments
• Integrate with GIS, document management and other corporate standards as required
• Securely share subsets of your asset data via web service interfaces with the contractors that need it
• Assess data compliance against project phase and changing data requirements
• Accurately track asset history, including the point-in-time state of any asset

AIMS is securely cloud-hosted; users require only a browser and appropriate authentication credentials to access it.

Find out more about AIMS by using the button below.

To see how AIMS can help deliver your asset information requirements, request a demonstration by clicking on the button below: