South Western Railway: Station Information and Surveillance Systems

Telent provides preventative and reactive maintenance services to all of SWR’s SISS assets. There are around 2500 faults reported each year that Telent manage. To support SWR’s requirements, Telent is providing a customer-driven service, balancing asset availability and costs. Telent was initially awarded the contract in 2009 – the contract was retained in 2013 (when Telent added CCTV) and when the franchise changed in 2017 - with the contract remaining in place until 2023.

Telent’s engineers maintain over 97% availability at major stations, ensuring that customers are able to access information and help whenever required. At smaller stations with fewer public interactions, Telent is directed by SWR as to where to focus its efforts. The team holds weekly meetings with the service delivery team to track faults and agree resolution timescales. Telent’s approach includes with competitors where required, such as providing access. If another party has no SSoW, Telent has provided engineers so they can work under Telent’s SSoW.

To support industry wide collaboration and value, Telent, SWR and SWR’s other sub-contractors all contribute to a fund which is used to deal with third party interference – the teams will fix each other’s mistakes to maintain service rather than allocating blame or billing. This close collaborative working ensures that Telent supports SWR in meeting its objectives – both in the service they provide to their customers and their financial obligations

Telent is refreshing equipment as it fails and gradually upgrading the customer’s assets without the need for extra expenditure. In many cases Telent is able to install a new asset at a similar cost to repairing an old one.

Telent has worked throughout the contract to provide service improvements to achieve the required availability. Some specific examples of historical value improvement on the SWR maintenance contract are:

• VPN System Access – implemented remote secure VPN access to proactively monitor and manage devices on the CIS. This allowed Telent to identify and respond to faults before they are reported and to undertake remote diagnostics improving the effectiveness of our fix.

• Upgrade of Hard Discs – addressed a problem of high failure rate of hard discs in TFT internal PCs caused by inadequate provision for cooling in the original design. Telent replaced hard discs with flash memory cards. Due to the reduction in failures and the consequent repair costs Telent has funded this upgrade.

The Telent TRAMMS customer portal means that SWR do not need to maintain their own fault system. TRAMMS allows SWR to log faults directly into the system, providing additional efficiency from reducing emails and phone calls. Automatic notifications are sent by TRAMMS for predefined fault conditions and closures. Information provided to SWR is real-time and transparent and available on SWR’s computers or handheld devices – including on Telent provided tablets. Additionally, Weekly KPI reports aligned to our deliverables, are created and published by the system, showing how additional resources are resolving their faults efficiently