Trimble's Rail Solutions portfolio is designed for intelligent railway planning and operations.

Harsh Pareek, Regional Sales Director, India and SAARC, Trimble Solutions

Trimble launched its railways focused portfolio in India in 2017, recognizing the ongoing transformation of Indian Railways. Trimble's Railway solutions are fully integrated for end-to-end and intelligent railway infrastructure and asset lifecycle management. “Our solutions combine the latest in sensors and monitoring technologies with customized software and wireless communications to quickly and accurately capture the data needed to maintain and construct rail infrastructure, or to manage rail transport assets,” states Harsh Pareek, Regional Sales Director, India and SAARC, Trimble Solutions, excerpts from the interview…

Could you brief us on the scope and potential for Trimble in the Indian government's massive modernization drive in the railway sector and construction of metros?

Indian Railways is a massive organization and it is great to see it undergoing rapid modernisation and transformation. In the National Rail Plan: Vision 2030, some of the important areas earmarked for development include high speed trains, safety and track modernization. Notably, all three are interrelated; for example, in the absence of track modernisation, neither safety can be enhanced nor high speed trains are possible.

We believe our cutting-edge technology solutions like Trimble Rail Asset Lifecycle Management, SurfView, GEDO CE and Beena Vision can play a meaningful role in the ongoing transformation of Indian railways. These solutions are in fact well-suited to help the Indian Railways achieve its key goals of launching high-speed trains, enhancing passenger safety and achieving higher operational efficiency.

Further, as India progressively adopts metro rail networks in most of its large cities, we are ready with a comprehensive portfolio of industry-leading solutions that can help plan, design and construct these projects faster and within costs, and operate them for maximum efficiency and safety.

What are the solutions Trimble offers for different stages of infrastructure planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and repair of rail transport assets?

Trimble's railway solutions are fully integrated for end-to-end and intelligent railway
infrastructure and asset lifecycle management, covering all key phases of planning, design, construction, and finally operations and maintenance or ongoing repairs of rail assets. Our railways portfolio is categorised into infrastructure solutions, rolling stock solutions and network operations solutions. These solutions are designed to streamline all processes and workflows in order to keep new or upgradation projects on time and costs on target; thus enabling India's metro and rail networks meet their expansion and transformation goals.

During the planning phase, Trimble Quantm alignment planning solution simplifies and streamlines the complex process of evaluating and selecting transportation corridors. Quantm can in fact be immensely useful for planning all upcoming freight corridors and metro projects in India, as it optimises route location by integrating engineering, social, economic as well as environmental factors. This not only helps increase the safety and maintenance but also works to reduce cost and risks.

During the construction phase, Trimble's TILOS enables time-location planning, while VICO helps estimate precise time scheduling and costs for railway or metro construction projects. Together, these tools help keep the construction within time and cost estimates.  In addition to this, Trimble's Tekla Structures enables the creation and management of accurately detailed, highly constructible 3D structural models regardless of material or structural complexity. The models over the entire building process from conceptual design to fabrication, erection and construction management.

For the ongoing operations and maintenance, Trimble's Rail Asset Lifecycle Management solutions include Trimble Nexala and Trimble Beena Vision. The Nexala range of solutions are used by engineering, maintenance, and fleet operations teams of rail or metro operators to optimize maintenance programs, increase their asset utilization, and improve fleet management. These solutions utilize on-train equipment and cloud-based software to deliver real-time fleet-wide remote diagnostic information.

Trimble's Beena Vision solutions, including wayside systems, allow rail or metro operators to manage their rolling stock monitoring and maintenance through automatic measurements and inspections.

Our GEDO CE systems detects motion that may occur in railway structures (like bridges) and adjacent features, and can be used to survey railway lines and document all assets along the track. By measuring movement in landforms, bridges, buildings and other objects, these monitoring systems can prevent injury and damage during construction and operation of rail lines and facilities.

Additionally, SurfView is a vehicle-based rail and track surface imaging system that automates track inspection. It can ensure automated monitoring of railway tracks and can detect all types of anomalies including cracks, missing sleepers or fasteners, thus preventing derailment accidents.

All these tools use cutting-edge technologies to enhance efficiencies across all phases; and can therefore be a powerful enabler of the ongoing transformation of Indian Railways.

Could you give us a couple of recent projects where Trimble solutions have been used and its techno-commercial benefits? 

In 2017, we launched our Railways focused portfolio in India, recognizing the ongoing transformation of Indian Railways in order to serve a growing population with high-speed, safe, comfortable and efficient transportation. Our Railways portfolio includes products like GEDO trolley, which allows parameters to be checked at every inch of the track before it is fixed, and has been already been used for Hyderabad and Chennai Metro Rail projects. We are also working closely with Dedicated Freight Corridor Corp (DFCC) and High-Speed Rail (HSR) for various solutions.

In 2018, Chennai Metro chose Trimble's Nexala rail asset management solution to improve its real-time status monitoring and analytics capability by accessing up-to-date fleet status. This implementation marks the first time that a digital real-time, condition-based monitoring has been rolled out by an Indian rail operator.

Trimble's Tekla Structures, the world's leading Constructible BIM Software, has been used for design, engineering and construction of the Chenab river bridge in Kashmir, which is the highest railway bridge anywhere in the world. It has also been used for designing some of the most iconic railway and metro stations. For example, Pune Metro's Mangalwar Peth station will wear a unique 'Mavala Pagadi' look once it is completed, thanks to advanced structural designs generated using Tekla Structures.

Our solutions for transportation and logistics industries prioritize workers' and end-users' safety. For example, our asset management solution allows railways to monitor track and wagon performance on a real-time basis and get real-time diagnostics, which can not only reduce downtime, but go a long way in preventing derailments that make up more than 50 per cent of all railway accidents in India.

How flexible are your solutions when it comes to revamping of existing railway assets?

We believe that planning and implementing railway upgradation or revamp projects requires collecting precise and accurate information on existing facilities and conditions as a first step, and then using modern construction techniques to make full use of this information. To illustrate, the development of high-speed rail (HSR) requires precision planning and construction technologies.

Trimble's cutting-edge solutions streamline and enhance efficiencies across all stages of a modernization or upgradation project. For example, in the design stage, architects and engineers can use Trimble's SketchUp Pro and Tekla Structures to create 3D BIM models that functions as a centralised, digital representation of all-important information related to the project, enriched with manufacturer-specific data, calculation parameters, and even maintenance details.

Similarly, Trimble Quantm technology has helped plan more than 5,500 km of high-speed rail, reducing construction costs and limiting environmental impacts. During construction, Trimble utilizes GNSS and optical technologies to increase productivity while maintaining high levels of accuracy and precision. Trimble GEDO CE systems are used for construction and maintenance of high-speed railways worldwide, including the iconic 400 kph (250 mph) Beijing-Shanghai route in China. Further, Trimble solution has facilitated the flexibility of customisation to the project teams. This moldability provided by the software helped in ease of adaptation suiting the changing needs and requirements of the project.

Brief us on the future outlook in terms of adoption of emerging technologies and automation in the railways / metro sectors?

The Indian Rail sector is ripe for innovations and developments in all areas. These include consumer-friendly initiatives like interoperable electronic payment methods for fare payments, such as smartcards, bank cards, mobile wallets and near-field communication (NFC)-enabled devices. But more importantly, these innovations can address operational modernisation and safety related concerns via smart monitoring of tracks and asset life management. Moreover, the government's vision aims for at disruption in every area, including even the environmental impact of railways. 

At Trimble, we firmly believe technology will play a major role in the continuing expansion and transformation of India's rail and metro networks. Trimble’s Rail Solutions portfolio is designed for intelligent railway planning and operations. Our solutions combine the latest in sensors and monitoring technologies with customized software and wireless communications to quickly and accurately capture the data needed to maintain and construct rail infrastructure, or to manage rail transport assets.

For example, our rail asset lifecycle management products manage the lifecycle of rail transport assets from operation through maintenance and repair. Using this comprehensive portfolio of on-board and wayside condition monitoring solutions, both Indian Railways as well as urban metro rail operators can improve operational efficiencies, increase safety, manage service levels and reduce costs.

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