<span class="" id="parent-fieldname-description"> Passenger rail operator Sydney Trains has won an engineering excellence award for a system designed to automate the scheduling of its new Waratah train fleet. </span> <p>The Control Systems and Communications award, at the 2014 Sydney Engineering Excellence Awards, was jointly awarded to Sydney Trains and Quintiq for the Fleet Allocation Recording System (FARS).<br /><br />“The Sydney Trains Fleet Allocation Recording System is a world first,” Waratah Train PPP project director Fred Paton said, “transforming paper-based practices to deliver near rail-time information validation on current train movements and allocations – as well as streamlining train allocation planning up to 14 days in advance.<br /><br />“The Waratah Train FARS project has automated Sydney Trains’ workflows to record train allocation information. It also provides maintenance alerts and real time information received from other planning, asset management, timetabling and train tracking systems.”<br /><br />The software for FARS was developed and supplied by Quintiq, a Netherlands-headquartered IT-engineering firm.<br /><br />The FARS software enables innovative modelling, visualisation and propagation technologies designed to assist schedulers to adjust train allocation ensuring trains are presented at depots at the right time for inspections irrespective of network issues.<br /><br />“Implementing software components of projects well is tremendously difficult,” an award judge said. “This project got it right, on time and on budget.”<br /><br />FARS is designed to facilitate planning and fleet management through a simple user interface transforming logistical planning across Sydney Trains, delivering enhanced decision making and optimised operations.</p>
