The rail industry is trying to balance the often conflicting demands of increasing network capacity, maintaining safety, improving passenger performance and reducing overall Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs. The increased competitiveness and fragmentation of the industry over recent years has also made it increasingly difficult to make the necessary capital investments in infrastructure and rolling stock. Innovative passenger services are also required in order to maintain competitiveness with road and air transport.

Helios supports customers in the development of new technology and business solutions that contribute towards these strategic objectives. Our areas of focus cover safety critical applications such as ERTMS (European Railway Traffic Management System), O&M and business/passenger services. We deliver this value through the development of new policy/strategy, technology standards and implementation guidance notes for the industry.

The railway industry has traditionally utilised a closely integrated set of proprietary technologies. In the future, as the industry begins to focus more upon total through life costs, more opportunities are being sought to utilise Custom Off The Shelf (COTS) products. We aim to help key decision makers in the selection, standardisation and procurement of such platforms. Our key areas of technology expertise are telecomms networks (eg GSM, DBWT), satellite navigation and Information Management (IM).

Helios is able to support a wide range of customers and is often called upon to develop consensus amongst groups of stakeholders with varied perspectives and points of view. Those with whom we have worked include infrastructure operators, train operating companies, standards bodies and private industry.

For relevant case studies visit our project profiles pages.

You can also read our future vision of rail travel in the UK and how telecommunications will be essential to achieving it.