NETWORK RAIL has launched the process to appoint a Railway Systems Integration Partner (RSIP) for the East Coast main line under the Digital Railway Programme. The RSIP will work in ‘a co-located and integrated team’ with NR’s London North Eastern & East Midlands Route and other technology partners to deliver upgrades on the ECML, in a deal valued at £45 million.
NR says LNE & EM Route is looking ‘to team up early, and on a whole life basis, with a technology provider to work together on designs, plans, phasing, costs and realising benefits’. NR is seeking to let an eight-year framework contract for provision of European Train Control System (ETCS), within which are three 30-year supply and maintain contracts, covering King’s Cross to Peterborough, the Moorgate branch and an as yet unspecified route. The framework agreement is expected to be awarded in April 2019.
NR highlights that the train control system was last substantially upgraded in the 1970s and will need to be renewed over coming Control Periods, while many of the new trains will be fitted with in-cab signalling technology.
The RSIP will work with a Train Control Partner (TCP), with the process to appoint the TCP launched in August (p24, last month), and a Traffic Management Partner (TMP). NR says the TMP will be the subject of a separate forthcoming procurement, although it had published a tender notice in June for delivery of a TM system from King’s Cross to Doncaster South. The RSIP will ‘lead all programme and change management and industry integration activities’, from programme definition to benefit realisation phase.
