Consortium awarded S$18.8 million contract for new rail asset management system

SINGAPORE — The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has awarded an S$18.8 million contract to a consortium to develop and implement a new system that will monitor the health of various operating rail assets.

The implementation of the system will start with the Downtown Line (DTL), with the system’s core functions expected to be operationally ready by mid-2020.

In a press release on Monday (Aug 20), LTA said that the Rail Enterprise Asset Management Systems (Reams) will integrate asset information across the entire rail system, “so that the health of the various operating assets can be monitored holistically over their respective lifecycles”.

The consortium from Siemens and ST Engineering Electronics will develop a software platform that will house and analyse data from DTL’s maintenance management system and its fleet of 92 trains.

The software will also analyse data across six systems — namely the power supply system, signalling system, communications system, integrated supervisory control system, trackwork, and platform screen doors — that are critical to the DTL’s efficient operation.

Other rail lines will be added to Reams in phases thereafter.

Reams is part of a series of new technologies that the authorities are implementing in order to improve rail reliability.

LTA said that it currently tracks asset information using multiple systems on individual lines. With Reams, the system will be equipped with data analytics capabilities to monitor asset performance, and to identify potential faults before they occur.

This, says LTA, allows the assets to be “repaired or renewed pre-emptively”.

“This shift towards data-driven just-in-time predictive maintenance and asset renewal is key to bringing rail reliability to the next level, and optimising overall lifecycle costs,” said LTA.

It added: “LTA is confident that the consortium’s deep experience with Singapore’s rail operating environment will enable it to successfully develop and implement Reams, and to provide long-term support for the system.”

In addition to the DTL, the government has planned for a comprehensive renewal of the North-South and East-West lines (NSEWL). The renewal exercise is now at the halfway mark.

In November last year, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan spoke of urgent plans to renew six core components of the NSEWL by 2024, which are namely the sleepers, third rail, signalling system, power supply, track circuits and the old first-generation trains which were delivered in 1986 and have been in operations since 1987.

The signalling systems, sleepers and third rails which supply electrical power to the train have been renewed.

Plans are afoot to renew the power supply and replace the track circuits, both of which will happen later this year.

Last month, it was announced that the NSEWL will get a new fleet of trains in a contract worth S$827 million, to replace the inaugural batch of 66 trains which have been running for more than three decades.

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