DT Infrastructure is maintaining the trackside infrastructure for the state-of-the-art High Capacity Metro Trains (HCMT) Pakenham East Depot, working closely with a range of stakeholders to keep 70 HCMTs moving.
Melbourne’s High Capacity Metro Trains (HCMT) have been an exciting addition to the city’s rail network. Supporting the operation of the 70 strong fleet is the Pakenham East Depot (PED).
The HCMT PED is one of the largest state-of-the-art stabling yards in Victoria. Its dense concentration of trackside assets includes more than 21 kilometres of linear track, 28 overhead structures spread across 13 overhead sections, 46 turnouts and point machines, six derailers, 53 signals, seven train stops, 140 axle counters, three train gates and six signal Relocatable Equipment Buildings (REBs).
It contains the vital signalling equipment required to manage the safe operation of the trains, such as an integrated test facility that is currently being used to prove the latest high tech CBTC signalling equipment for the Metro Tunnel Project.
DTI is responsible for the reactive and scheduled maintenance of all rail systems components within the depot, including signalling, track and overhead wiring assets. It also provides 24/7 on-call service for any rail systems faults, performing reactive works and planning future corrections.
Rail Express spoke with David Khoo, Program Manager at DTI to learn more about the company’s approach to innovative asset management.
“Maintenance of components within a complex rail system are scheduled based on tailored Technical Maintenance Plans (TMP’s) developed by our in-house subject matter experts, which can mean a mixture of monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, yearly and ad-hoc basis,” Khoo said.
“DTI acts as the engineering authority for the trackside infrastructure, providing support, assurance and acceptance services for third party rail systems works within the depot facilities.
“We are responsible for ensuring all scheduled maintenance activities occur in a timely manner and are of the standard required to ensure reliability of the overall network.”
Maintaining the assets
Khoo said the team conducts disciplined maintenance informed by the TMPs and supported by the use of comprehensive datasets to identify variations in patterns or anomalies requiring specific attention.
“The technical maintenance plans and facilities manuals we create govern how we maintain the assets and we review them periodically to ensure they are up to date and fit-for-purpose,” he said.
The documentation is critical in the early stages of maintenance work as it ensures every team member is aware of the processes and the expectations of all stakeholders.
Khoo said DTI also uses a range of technologies to manage, plan and streamline asset management and maintenance.
“We adopt a data-driven decision-making process and employ a technology platform to manage the end-to-end maintenance process and plan the work that needs to be done.
“The platform that we use stores all maintenance records in the system and issues workflow requests. This way we have visibility of all maintenance that has been undertaken and what work needs to be completed in the future.”
A triage system based on the maintenance data gathered and analysed is used to rank the criticality of works required. This starts at P1 for critical issues and then moves to P3 for lower priorities. Items can move along this system, giving our team a clear idea of where we need to step in to stop an issue becoming critical.
“DTI tracks the maintenance work through dashboard reporting. The goal for us is to have visibility of asset performance, and to maintain the asset at a high enough standard to ensure high availability of the system.”
While DTI works to ensure no major disruptions occur, they can be inevitable, and it’s imperative that the impact is minimised as much as possible.
“We have a team on-call that responds and addresses those issues in a timely manner if they occur. By having a team ready to react and respond quickly, it means that any faults can be rectified without delay.”
a new, state-of-the -art system
The arrival of the new HCMT trains marked a significant shift in Melbourne’s train network and the experience of an organisation like DTI can play a huge part in setting networks like it up for success.
“A robust engineering change management process is established to ensure that the testing, introduction and acceptance of new software and equipment introduced by the CBTC system is managed in a methodological way. We are able to manage the testing process by documenting the changes well.”
Working with stakeholders
The implementation of newer and higher performance trains is being seen in more Australian cities and is resulting in a huge step forward in the capability and capacity of train networks.
With so many interdependencies in these complex networks, careful collaboration between all stakeholders is required to ensure their successful operation.
“As the maintainer of the trackside infrastructure that connects all systems, our approach is to work in collaboration with depot operations, rolling stock and CBTC system suppliers, commissioning teams, engineers and technical personnel, to conduct acceptance on the system,” Khoo said.
“In the case of PED, there has been fantastic collaboration between the Rail Network Alliance (the CBTC system supplier), MTM (the operator) and Downer (the asset owner), along with the Department of Transport and Planning.”
He explained that the maintenance projects DTI undertake also include responsibility for third party acceptance and assurance of new technology in depot facilities. As a result, the organisation’s in-house expert teams have established a process to ensure the process gateways are carefully managed from the project’s early stages. This, Khoo said, allows DTI to ensure it can track the engineering changes as required.
“It is critical that our team manages the expectations of all stakeholders” he said.
“It has been important for us to have open communication to ensure maintenance and acceptance activities are completed in an efficient and collaborative way.
“We strive to achieve a win-win solution for our partners. Ensuring these new state-of-the-art passenger trains are available to meet the demands of growing Melbourne.”
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With all of those structures and also the amount of track and turnouts was it over engineered?
Everything they do seems platinum.