Remote condition monitoring - points - the maintainers point of view

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It is a common myth that remote condition monitoring (RCM) will prevent failures. In the real world it is people such as the maintainer, the installer and the designer actually prevent failures and the biggest burden falls on the maintainer. The principal purpose of RCM is to provide information that will allow the maintainer to act in such a way as to prevent failures. By acting in a timely manner and with good information the maintainer can save the considerable costs of delays caused by failures and additionally reduce the incident risks to both maintenance operatives and to passengers. An RCM system is an asset in its own right that will require maintenance. Such maintenance comes at a cost both in financial and in risk terms, as operatives will be required to go trackside to inspect and repair it. While the maintenance of points and other signalling assets are well within the training and experience of the maintenance operatives, RCM is not, and so this will either have to be sub-contacted out (increasing cost and the likely down time) or significant training of in-house staff will be required. Maintainers are busy people, who anyway make regular visits to their assets, and who by good training and local knowledge, are able to prevent many failures without the need of any RCM system. The challenge for points RCM is to convince the maintainer that RCM will save more money than it costs. Recent high profile failures of RCM Assets have lead many maintainers to be rightly skeptical of the cost benefit of points RCM. It is now up to the points RCM suppliers to show how such systems can be made to work for the maintainer. (10 pages)