Rail: Automated Infrastructure Design - R:AID
Lead Participant:
COSTAIN LTD
Abstract
"Costain and BrydenWood's longstanding and innovative partnership is leading disruption of the traditional design/engineering services marketplace through the development of an integrated suite of tools to automatically design the infrastructure of the future.
Our vision is for a **'data-centric infrastructure design process'** that will reduce the time and cost of railway design in a safe and transparent way.
We will support Network Rail's Whole Systems Modelling team in the development and demonstration of a new Rail: Automated Infrastructure Design (R:AID) toolkit.
The project aligns with the objectives of the Systems Operator, which are:
* planning future strategic infrastructure investment
* allocating capacity on the national rail network
The current mechanism for planning investment and allocating capacity is isolated from the real-world environment. The processes for designing rail systems isolated from the planning model, its capacity requirements and options.
We will demonstrate how:
* We have built on existing generative design technologies
* Can develop a solution relevant to rail
* Deliver a demonstrator within 6 months
Our project benefits from similar work for Highways England and seeks to remove the need for designing from first principles each time. We will take predetermined engineering standards, methods and procedures and adapt them to create a rules-driven multi-disciplinary process for rapidly designing and engineering a railway.
This process, using a generative design approach based on formulae, logic and the input from rail engineering specialists, will seek to create a design that complies to the rules and regulations of the railway and the ORR, but dramatically reducing the time it takes to design, with accurate design leading to improved certainty of constructing and operating a railway.
The result is a fully integrated digital design model that provides significant production efficiencies across the asset lifecycle and fully supports a projects business case and objectives. Digital design solutions will revolutionise productivity, lower exposure to harm, achieve predictable delivery on time, to lower cost, providing the desired quality with fewer defects."
Our vision is for a **'data-centric infrastructure design process'** that will reduce the time and cost of railway design in a safe and transparent way.
We will support Network Rail's Whole Systems Modelling team in the development and demonstration of a new Rail: Automated Infrastructure Design (R:AID) toolkit.
The project aligns with the objectives of the Systems Operator, which are:
* planning future strategic infrastructure investment
* allocating capacity on the national rail network
The current mechanism for planning investment and allocating capacity is isolated from the real-world environment. The processes for designing rail systems isolated from the planning model, its capacity requirements and options.
We will demonstrate how:
* We have built on existing generative design technologies
* Can develop a solution relevant to rail
* Deliver a demonstrator within 6 months
Our project benefits from similar work for Highways England and seeks to remove the need for designing from first principles each time. We will take predetermined engineering standards, methods and procedures and adapt them to create a rules-driven multi-disciplinary process for rapidly designing and engineering a railway.
This process, using a generative design approach based on formulae, logic and the input from rail engineering specialists, will seek to create a design that complies to the rules and regulations of the railway and the ORR, but dramatically reducing the time it takes to design, with accurate design leading to improved certainty of constructing and operating a railway.
The result is a fully integrated digital design model that provides significant production efficiencies across the asset lifecycle and fully supports a projects business case and objectives. Digital design solutions will revolutionise productivity, lower exposure to harm, achieve predictable delivery on time, to lower cost, providing the desired quality with fewer defects."
Lead Participant | Project Cost | Grant Offer |
|---|---|---|
| COSTAIN LTD | £92,198 | £ 46,099 |
Participant |
||
| BRYDEN WOOD TECHNOLOGY LIMITED | £75,568 | £ 45,340 |
People |
ORCID iD |
| David Owens (Project Manager) |