Why the next step in making a National CCS DRACAS real is Asset Integrity Group’s DRACAS roadmap
The need to share CCS defect information between duty holders in GB rail was recognised well over a decade ago. A national CCS DRACAS (NDRACAS) would solve this problem, but until recently, the industry struggled to make effective progress. Achieving NDRACAS in the context of multiple organisations is a complex and demanding task, made more so by the different aims and objectives of individual CCS projects.
The lack of progress was despite that the fact that operators, individually, could see the potential strong benefits of a national CCS DRACAS. And these potential benefits are very strong. For European Train Control Systems (ETCS) alone the benefits could be £231m over ten years, while ‘doing nothing’ could result in industry disbenefits of £315m over the same time period.
As an essential first step in the process, and in collaboration with industry, RSSB codified the complex procedures needed in an exemplar ‘National CCS DRACAS Process’, using a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach. The findings were summarised in a Concept of Operations document, and have been used to revise RIS-0707-CCS Management of Safety Related Control, Command and Signalling System Failures, including the new NDRACAS processes. The revised version was published in September 2023.
The next step, to actually implement NDRACAS, requires a detailed, well-considered plan that has been collectively agreed, so the Asset Integrity Group established a series of workshops to identify industry’s pain points in implementing NDRACAS and develop the projects needed to address them.
These four workshops included 47 invited participants, drawn from infrastructure managers, railway undertakings, ROSCOs, suppliers, and cross-industry groups. The workshops covered a range of topics, with particular focus on the principles of reporting and sharing data in NDRACAS. The outputs from the workshops were 107 ‘MUST’ statements, identifying actions that must happen to solve an industry pain point in using NDRACAS. These ‘MUST’ statements were then the basis of offline collaboration to generate a roadmap comprising six workstreams, 70 projects, and to be delivered over four phases between 2023 and 2025.
It's important to recognise how central collaborative working has been to the development of the roadmap, and that collaborative working remains essential when implementing NDRACAS. Drawing on the wide range of experience and perspectives held by different operators has enabled the project to identify critical work packages, critical dependencies, and workstream interfaces. The structured and detailed roadmap has also identified the activities in which multiple workstreams will need to collaborate during the implementation process. Just because a particular workstream starts by working on ‘its own’ tasks doesn’t mean that it won’t need to collaborate with another workstream later on.
Given the ultimate purpose, a national system that allows CCS data to be shared across different organisations, the emphasis on collaboration in both the development and implementation phases makes sense. The cross-industry DRACAS Steering Group is therefore currently considering who to invite to lead the six workstreams so that cross-industry collaboration is embedded and strengthened as the real NDRACAS comes to life.
