USER STORIES

IN THE EDM/PDM WORLD :

RAILTRACK


For large projects such as those in the rail industry with high value, often low margins and high risk, Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems are essential to enable projects to run to time, cost and specification. They not only provide full document control but just as importantly they provide the documented evidence that control exists.

Railtrack's Property Directorate have been using SER EDM since March 1998 and in this time the system has grown significantly and is now well established with 200 seats. Steve Lewington Mapping Systems Manager at Railtrack Property explains "The system has been tremendously successful, and is very popular with the user population. This is partly due to our policy of risk reduction by selecting industry standard software. SER EDM is already well established within our own organisation, and is being used, albeit for different tasks by West Coast Route Modernisation Project and other Railtrack Departments."

Railtrack PLC was formed in 1994 to be the custodian of Britain's railway infrastructure. As well as the running and upkeep of track, signals, stations, depots, arches, bridges and viaducts, the company has one of the country's largest property portfolios, including over 40,000 commercial property units and thousands of hectares of land. The rail industry has undergone one of the most radical changes in its history and Railtrack's Property Directorate has evolved to reflect these changes. Based in their new offices in London and Manchester the Property Directorate focuses on all rail related property activities and is responsible for the management and development of one of the country's largest property portfolios.

The Directorate's property facilities are diverse. From freight sites to wayleaves and easements, from advertising hoardings to office buildings from garden extensions to telecoms cables. The sheer scale of the task of managing over 40,000 separate lettings is enormous. It is the responsibility of the Property team to find hidden value for both Railtrack and its customers and partners and to enhance facilities to encourage rail usage.

SER's DM software has been tremendously successful within the rail industry, capturing some 60% of the market, and being used on an estimated £7 billion of rail projects world-wide. SER's rail customers include a number of Railtrack's Department's such as West Coast Route Modernisation; together with other leading rail organisations including Hong Kong Mass Transit (MTRC), HSL's Rail link in the Netherlands and a number of service organisations such as Serco Raildata and Railpart.

The EDM system is being used for the management of maps and other related site documentation for Railtrack's 2500 stations and associated property. At present the system holds three distinct categories of plans of all 2500 sites. The first is a clean up-to-date Ordnance Survey map of the station and its surrounding area. The second is a copy of the first plan showing the current freehold ownership boundary of the company by a broken black line. The final plan is the current station lease plan as agreed in the station lease document to the Train Operating Company. The same lease plan also exists for the freight and depot sites and over the coming months the blank and boundary versions will also be added along with the arch estates documentation.

Railtrack Property initially envisaged holding the scanned images electronically at the site of each drawing office and distributing it to users by CD. It was quickly realised, however, that by holding this information in a central store the system could be 'live' to all users across the Directorate and potentially corporately. Needless to say Railtrack now make use of a central server situated at Crewe which currently serves seven Railtrack offices, with each of the users having instantly available information on their desktop. This principal also rigorously enforces document management processes in order to control use and validity of the data. A CD browser solution has also been developed to enable those users away from the network to have access to the information.

Scanning equipment is situated within each office which allows the scanning of documents and associated attributes which will allow the subsequent retrieval of the correct information. A team of System Administrators have been established to provide guidance in the use and application of the system and ensure that the business procedures are adhered to. They also have the responsibility of controlling input of both new and updated mapping and estate documentation as well as managing the access rights to the system. They have a further task in controlling the creation and release of information on CD to outbased users.

The system has been tailored to meet the needs of Railtrack Property, so that on entering the system the user may choose to search on any of the customised criteria. Search options currently include; property reference number, the location name, the type of plan, type of property, the Zone, the Regional Manager responsible for the area, and the railway tenant and any other content of the plan itself. Once the desired image has been identified it can be viewed using a raster viewer that has again been modified to enable Railtrack Property to work more effectively with map based images. Standard windows tiling methods can be used to position a number of images on the screen at once. Tools are also available that give the ability to zoom in and out of areas of the image as well as pan, once zoomed in.

Steve Lewington of Railtrack Property concludes "The introduction of the SER system has enabled more efficient working practices within the Directorate. For example the inclusion of a highly accurate measuring tool within the software enables users to accurately calculate distance measurements within various property plans much more quickly and accurately than conventional manual methods would allow. This frees skilled technicians from laborious administrative tasks, so enabling them to concentrate on more important surveying and draughting activities which in turn will have enormous benefits for Railtrack Property."


For further information contact:
Philip Robinson
SER Systems Ltd
39 Nottingham Road
Stableford
Nottingham NG9 8AD
ENGLAND

Tel: +44 115 9357 060
Fax: +44 115 9357 067
Email: phil.robinson@seruk.com
http://www.seruk.com

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Copyright 1999 by John Stark