Geospatial engineering and the rail industry
Colin McAteer MSc, FCInstCES, MRICS, MPWI, Principal Engineer, Track (Geometry & Geomatics), Network Rail talks to Darrell Smart
GEOSPATIAL engineering industries are under pressure. Universities and colleges are pulling geospatial courses, unqualified users are bringing disrepute to the profession and in some cases a distinct lack of skills and standards that show no sign of improvement. I may be painting a pretty dark picture here but it’s not all doom and gloom.
There is a new hope – no not that one with lightsabers – the one where the profession takes a stand and makes a difference. There is desire to improve skills and raise standards.
Every single civil engineering surveyor working within the industry – on every minor and major project – must be professionally trained and qualified. Improving standards, ultimately raises the profile of the profession and the civil engineering surveyor.
Civil Engineering Surveyor spoke to Colin McAteer, principal engineer, track (geometry and geomatics) at Network Rail to get his opinion on the state of geospatial engineering, key issues and opportunities in the rail industry and what the surveying future looks like...
What is the current state of the geospatial engineering profession?
It’s interesting times. The famous Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’, means that interesting times are usually full of turmoil and difficulty and that’s what it feels like right now. I get slightly concerned about the democratisation of survey equipment across the board and a potential narrowing of the opportunities for formal education.
Newcastle University is a prime example. There’s a great deal of risk caused by unqualified ‘users’ of survey equipment and the direct negative impact that has on the profession.
We need to protect our industry standards and ensure that the industry is professionally governed.However, on a positive note, techniques using drone technology are transforming the profession. In recent years we’ve seen the re-emergence of photogrammetry into mainstream surveying – what might have been considered a fairly specialist branch of geomatics in the past – with the advent of UAS/drones. My main concern with this is that everyone and their dog has got access to a drone.
Drones are available on the high street and photogrammetric software is available online but passing the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) requirements for flying a drone and watching a few online video tutorials doesn’t make you a photogrammetrist.
As equipment gets simplified and deliverables automated we need to place more emphasis on the rigor applied during collection ensuring there’s sufficient redundancy to have confidence in the results.
For me, these are red flags which justify the importance of such requirements for professional institution membership. To proudly display post-nominal letters after your name show that your knowledge and skills have been independently assessed.
What can be done to improve geospatial engineering skills and raise standards?
We need to protect our industry standards and ensure that the industry is professionally governed. Membership of CICES, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) or The Survey Association (TSA) can go a long way to achieving that. Approved development schemes are a great way of demonstrating that your career progression and skills are being constantly monitored.
There are opportunities for our industry to learn from other institutions, such as the Permanent Way Institute (PWI) who run track focused short courses and offer diplomas that can help in the pursuit of chartered engineer status.
If something similar could be done in conjunction with the universities and colleges that offer geospatial courses, and the equipment manufacturers to offer lower cost, high value short courses in various topics, they could be used to bridge gaps in emerging and re-emerging techniques such as photogrammetry or just act as a refresher.
I’d also like to see the Engineering Council membership numbers increase – to have the discipline to go through the Engineering Council registration is testament to the effort and discipline that is applied to infrastructure projects.
An increase in CICES chartered engineers (CEng), incorporated engineers (IEng) and engineering technicians (EngTech) would also elevate our discipline – which is so vital to infrastructure projects – to the same footing as our civil engineering partners. There’s perhaps some work here, jointly between CICES, universities and employers to have our approved courses registered with the Engineering Council. Although the support for membership varies per employer, regarding the geospatial engineering profession, you do get employers who are very proactive and very keen to support their staff through professional development.
There is however a balance that needs to be struck whilst it would be good for employers to encourage its staff to attend extra courses in order to upgrade their skill sets our industry has a large number SME (Small Medium Enterprise) who need to balance the books and if you are learning then you aren’t earning.
How can we improve or encourage professional development within the industry if you have that barrier?
I would say that while it’s not an issue for larger employers like Network Rail, who have been extremely supportive regarding my personal developments and put me through my Masters degree, it can be for small survey companies and family run businesses. It’s hard for those organisations because of the small integral workforce. There’s undoubtedly a wealth of experience within SMEs and if we could find a low cost way of formalising, and perhaps peer reviewing, this on the job training then this may give survey technicians a career path.
We’re embracing the digital transformation and harnessing the power of cloud processing to allow the creation of digital realities which are underpinned by high positional accuracies.Continued professional development (CPD) is really essential but I think we do have a gap. I talk a lot about the competency triangle – what do you do when CPD uncovers a blind spot in your knowledge? You end up going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence.
How do you then get yourself to conscious competence?
I don’t think we’ve bridged that gap yet. But perhaps institutions can offer half days, full days or week courses. Universities could potentially help with this. During COVID, we had to move from face-to-face to online and back to blended training. This does help to keep the cost down, so maybe this is an offering that could be looked as a type of delivery.
What are the key issues facing the rail industry at this moment in time?
The industry as a whole is finally waking up to the not-so-new ways of working. We are still entrenched and slowly transitioning from our traditional chainage and offset methods to coordinated geometry. There is an interesting juxtaposition of the creation of near distortion-free SnakeGrid that was developed for the ‘West Coast Route Modernisation’ project, yet the same line of route still has its assets identified in miles and yards – effectively we’re still bouncing between the two.
The same is still true today – modern geospatial techniques are primarily deployed within the capital delivery phase. We’re starting to see more and more of our tier one contractors with an embedded subresource. Our traditional linear approach, from which we are diverging, makes the use of mainstream GIS difficult and it can slow down our digital transformation somewhat. Providing accurate and repeatable, geospatially sound data, quickly and efficiently, while improving safety by reducing the number of people going lineside to capture the data, is still critical.
The message from former Network Rail chief surveyor and CICES past president, Chris Preston to ‘survey once, use many times’ is probably truer now that when he first coined the phrase, as it reduces cost and improves safety.
What does the future look like for geospatial engineering in the rail industry?
I think it looks fantastic and an area that’s ready and ripe for innovation. We’re embracing the digital transformation and harnessing the power of cloud processing to allow the creation of digital realities which are underpinned by high positional accuracies. This, in time, will enhance our ability to undertake rapid change detection to monitor and predict our assets’ lifecycles.
There are so many opportunities within the rail industry for the geospatial engineer to really get involved in. These opportunities will support digital replicas and digital twins. There are research teams investigating the multi and hyperspectral response to lineside foliage as well as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques to monitor changes in the earthworks that affect the railway corridor. We’re seeing an uptake on the use of track measuring devices (TMD) in our track maintenance teams, replacing the slower and more labour intensive Hallade method of measuring the offset of a string line from the outside of a curve at the central point of a chord. It is encouraging as it introduces main stream geomatic principles to a whole new audience all while reducing the time spent undertaking the activity.
Plus, we’re starting to realise the safety benefits that can come from structure from motion-based reality models, bringing the site to the office for construction staging and planning as well as clash detection and digital rehearsal. With high accuracy GNSS availability and increased cellular coverage of the railway network, the benefits that geofencing can bring to workforce safety is also being explored.
There’s so much talent ready for the digital revolution. It will take a strong geospatial engineering backbone between us and our supply chains to make sure that what we do introduce, will work. With the rate of development in the field, who knows what is around the corner, and what could be developed or deployed in the rail industry – it is a very exciting time to be involved in geospatial engineering.
Colin McAteer MSc, FCInstCES, MRICS, MPWI, Principal Engineer, Track (Geometry & Geomatics), Network Rail was talking to Darrell Smart
Colin.Mcateer@networkrail.co.uk