The National Control Command and Signalling (CCS) Defect Recording, Analysis and Corrective Action System (DRACAS) is a crucial new tool in the management of rail. It solves problems caused by incomplete data sharing among duty holders. By enabling industry-wide sharing of defect information, the National CCS DRACAS will help prevent the recurrence of failures, faults, or defects across the network, ultimately improving safety and saving the industry millions of pounds.

Why we need a National CCS DRACAS 

Modern CCS systems like the European Train Control System bring more signalling equipment onto trains. This equipment has traditionally been located trackside. Having it on trains is a welcome and more modern approach. 

However, this also brings potential risks. For instance, onboard and trackside equipment is managed by different organisations and this makes information sharing difficult. 

Despite this, the need to share CCS defect information between duty holders in GB rail was recognised well over a decade ago. A national CCS DRACAS would enable all duty holders to share CCS defect data effectively. 

There has been an industry aspiration for a national CCS DRACAS for many years but industry struggled to make useful progress. This was despite that the fact that operators, individually, could see the potential strong benefits of such a system. But achieving a national CCS DRACAS in the context of multiple organisations is a complex and demanding task. The different aims and objectives of individual CCS projects add to the challenge. 

We used our unique and independent position in the industry to take the first steps and coordinate industry action for the National CCS DRACAS.

Current problems 

Without sharing data effectively, defects within a CCS system can lead to repeated instances of the same negative consequences on multiple occasions. Defects can also affect multiple implementations of the system, subsystem, equipment, or component, in different places.

The risk is not just that a particular problem may happen. The risk is it may occur repeatedly but be undetected due to the lack of a system to detect such defects.  A national CCS DRACAS would be able to detect and analyse relevant data, and at a nationwide level. 

Watch our video to learn about problems due to the lack of the National CCS DRACAS.

Benefits 

The National CCS DRACAS is expected to save rail around £231m over the next ten years. ‘Doing nothing’ could result in industry disbenefits of £315m over the same time period.

The main system-wide benefits of it are: 

  • organisations can be alerted to faults or failures they are causing in another part of the system, and vice versa.
  • failures, faults, and defects can be investigated by operational and planning teams at the system level. This means that root causes can be identified at this level.
  • appropriate corrective actions can be agreed, implemented, and monitored at the system level, not only at the level of individual operators.

This increases all organisations’ ability to detect defects, faults, or failures, and also helps them respond effectively, wherever the defect occurred on the network. 

The National CCS DRACAS will also be able to analyse data from multiple organisations and data sources to find hidden trends and improvement opportunities.

Watch our video about the National CCS DRACAS to learn more.

Structured stages 

The National CCS DRACAS is a highly complex long-term project that needs clearly structured stages. The first stages of the National CCS DRACAS involved industry stakeholders. They included:

  • establishing the National DRACAS Group to have oversight
  • developing and agreeing of the Concept of Operations (‘ConOps’) and the system model using a systems model based engineering (SMBE) approach
  • revising the relevant Rail Industry Standard.

For more detail on the current and next stages, see the roadmap agreed with industry.

Collaboration is essential 

The problems caused by the lack of a national CCS DRACAS affect the whole industry, so industry-wide collaboration is essential to solve them.

Different operators have a wide range of experiences and perspectives. Working with them enables us to identify work and dependencies that are critical to success. This also reveals the ways different workstreams interact with each other. 

The roadmap has worked out where multiple workstreams need to collaborate. A workstream may start by working on ‘its own’ tasks, but it may also need to collaborate with another workstream later on. 

Collaboration is overseen by the National DRACAS Group.