Celebrating UK rail’s contribution to international standards
It’s great that International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Standards Organisation and the International Telecommunication Union established 14 October as the day every year to celebrate standards and the way they help us all lead better lives.
Standards help different technical parts of things work together well. Seamlessly, in fact. They really do make a difference but usually everything works so well together that outsiders don’t even know they exist, much less appreciate the considerable skill and collaboration needed to produce them. A testament to the high quality of standards is that its probably only when things have broken that you’ve even thought about the existence of standards.
So standards, and the highly skilled experts who produce them, can be the unsung heroes and heroines of the technical world. We need a day to celebrate them, the good impact they have and the hard work that goes into producing them. Standards should be celebrated, not taken for granted.
RSSB and rail standards
RSSB has a key role in developing rail standards in the UK. This ensures that the different parts of the railway work well together, that accidents are minimised and that everyone’s journey is pleasant and effective. This applies to freight journeys just as much as passenger ones.
There are many types of standards used in the rail industry today, with varying levels of applicability. They cover the areas of control, command and signalling; data systems and telematics; energy; infrastructure; plant; rolling stock; traffic operation and management. Whether its deciding where to put signals for train drivers at the end of platforms, to making sure that digital data used in one system can be used in an adjacent one or how what dual fuel train vehicles need, standards have an important role to play. Standards can formalise existing best practice and establish requirements for emerging technical areas like hydrogen fuel cells. In short, standards are essential for the good functioning of the modern economy and its future development.
At RSSB standards are developed, evaluated and agreed through formal but collaborative processes between RSSB technical specialists and industry experts. Together they provide the robust scrutiny that is needed to ensure that the requirements for both equipment and railway staff behaviour have the intended effects, work effectively with other parts of the railway and don’t cause harm or inefficiencies. That’s quite an ask!
For a system as complex as a national railway it is obvious that this is a huge and complex undertaking, and also completely essential. So RSSB has many ‘standards committees’ and working groups to inform them, so that the standards can be adopted by the whole industry with confidence.
A great many people contribute their expertise to achieve this, whether as RSSB employees or volunteers from industry. RSSB is very appreciative of their contributions, and so should you be too. So as you celebrate standards today, please also celebrate all the work and people that underpins them.
