The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) and Worldline are working on a programme to develop R2 – an asset management solution relied on by over 70 organisations across the sector, including operators, ROSCOs, consultancies and Network Rail. The programme will ensure R2 is ready for the continued digitalisation of rail.
With over 15 million vehicle utilisation records, over 700,000 component records and over 40,000 vehicle records, R2 is an enormously valuable asset for rail in the UK and is relied upon for a variety of applications across industry: vehicle owners and manufacturers use it to meet the legal requirements for vehicle registration, operators use it so they don’t need to develop their own systems, while others use R2 because it can maximise rolling stock productivity and aids the traceability of assets.
Planned changes by Worldline and RSSB include improved functionality and user experience, the ability to better review the accuracy and quality of data in the system, easier data extraction and more ‘self-service’ functionality to minimise the time customers need to spend making changes in the system and use of application programming interfaces (APIs) to ensure R2 can work seamlessly with other systems. RSSB and Worldline are also working together on refreshing R2’s infrastructure to boost its resilience and ensure it is ready for the volume of data it will handle in future.
Nicola Faulder, product delivery manager at RSSB, said: “R2 has long been acknowledged by those in the know as the best source of rail vehicle data.
“I am keen that this is recognised by the wider industry, and the full potential of R2 exploited to help to deliver the ambitious changes planned as part of the sector reform agenda, and the development of the new Great British Railways organisation..”
R2 combines data from various industry asset management systems into one hub, which in turn feeds industry safety and reliability-related initiatives. The benefit of this is that it simplifies the gathering of information for new initiatives such as traffic management and customer information, and creates a richer data set for analysis. This also helps reduce the need for double input of data. R2 also has the potential to act as a central platform for other industry initiatives which will provide speed to market and ‘value for money’, including the combination of additional data sets that will enable greater insights for the benefit of the customer.
Jonny Holdcroft, head of corporate affairs at Worldline said: “No other system can do what R2 can: offering, most importantly, a vital, trusted safety resource but also powerful data insights to help rail achieve its commercial potential.
“We’re proud to be working with RSSB on a wide-ranging programme to ensure R2 is robust but also ready for rail’s digital future and delivering on the ambition of the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail and Great British Railways.”
Worldline says R2 can play a vital role in securing success for the whole rail industry. This includes the emerging framework in Great British Railways, as well as those operators and asset owners who will continue to use R2 to meet their obligations. The system has already been accredited by cross-industry projects as the best source of rolling stock data, and with increasing integration between systems, it has become more important than ever that the quality of this data is maintained.
