In this article, we describe a set of strategies that are used when developing safety-critical software, which is typical in railway applications with SIL-4 or lower level or in electronic safety equipment on board.

Many of our clients contact us to develop a basic structure at the organizational and process levels, in order to develop railway safety software according to CENELEC EN 50128 regulations.

Safety Case is composed of a set of documentary evidence divided into six main parts: The Definition of the System under analysis. The report on quality management. The report on safety management. Technical Safety Report References to Safety Reports. Conclusions.

Whenever a change will have an impact on safety, Common Safety Methods (CSMs) will require the proponent to decide, through expert judgment, the importance of the change based on the criteria established in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 402/2013.

CSM-RA is a framework that describes a mandatory and common European risk management process for railway industry.

RAMS Management aims to reduce the incidence of failures and/or their consequences throughout the life cycle and, therefore, minimize residual risk resulting from these failures. Life cycle, being the basis of RAMS Management, consists of 3 main blocks: Risk assessment and specification. Implementation and demonstration that the system meets the...

A Hazard Log is the document collecting all safety management activities, hazards identified, as well as solutions and decisions taken. It is the most important component of a safety management system for every railway project.

Rail sector of countries present a set of entities, organizations and public and private companies, being generally organized in a complex manner. In this article, we explain the different entities of the railway sector in Spain, what responsibilities each one of them has and what interrelation it has between them.

The concept of Railway RAMS is perfectly defined in CENELEC EN 50126 Standard, which develops specification and demonstration of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) of Railway Applications. On the broader concept, Railway RAMS is described as a quantitative and qualitative indicator of the extent to which a system (or the...

One of the great trends in RAMS Engineering is the search for strategies to optimize maintenance procedures. That is, improve maintainability of the systems and, therefore, reduce MTTR (Mean Time to Repair), leading to an improvement in system availability: If the system once broken down is fixed and put back into service before, availability...

When we carry out RAMS studies for our clients, it is very common that we will observe the difficulty in differentiating several parameters or basic objectives of reliability, maintenance and availability (RAM objectives) that characterize products, systems or facilities.

Safety Integrity Level is defined in CENELEC standards EN 50126, EN 50128 and EN 50129.In this article, the meanings of these acronyms used in the railway are explained. To do this, we will initially introduce the concept of Safety Integrity (without "Level").

Although regulations regarding Railway Interoperability within the European Union have mostly several years of existence, it is in recent months that we see that these are required within the scope of the execution of ALL projects and works of the railway sector, whether or not, within its operating plan in the short or medium term, planned the...

Changes in management policy in ADIF has led to the necessity of validating (accrediting) railway products, as described on its website, in order to assure safety and efficiency of rail network operated by ADIF.

It is a well-known fact that development of railway technology is evolving slowly and its ability to embrace disruptive technologies is slow. We observe that technology based on IoT (Internet of Things) is having a rapid and relevant implementation in equipment, used both in rolling stock of the railroad, as in the infrastructure itself.

The use of the Internet and mobile communications has allowed to give added value, in terms of its level of connectivity, to the everyday products of our environment as well as industrial and transport products. The use of radio modules has opened a wide range of possibilities and options within the fields of:

Today, rail projects are governed by CENELEC legal framework that aims to define and to establish the methodology of how to achieve the objectives of a rail system in terms of reliability, availability, maintainability and safety.

RAMS equipment of Leedeo Engineering will regularly develop Safety Studies for customers who, when executing the modification of a railway installation within a work or a project, are required to submit a Safety Case according to Implementing Regulation 402/2013 -relative to the adoption of a common safety method for evaluation and assessment of...

What is a SRAC? What is an exported risk? In this article, we explain it in detail

Leedeo Enginering has presented in its number 638 - March 2019 of the magazine Vía Libre, a reference at the state level within the railway sector, its industry consulting services.

The UNIFE (the European Rail Supply Industry Association) provides to its partners a set of software tools (worksheet or templates type) for LCC (Life Cycle Cost) calculation of rolling stock. These tools in template format are called UNIDATA and UNILIFE.

In railway industry and, particularly, in terms of its approval, accreditation, risk management and safety assessment processes, more types of qualified bodies are increasingly defined, categorized and emerge in order to be able to assess impartially and independently a process, a project, a product or a railway installation.

The implementing regulation 402/2013 concerning railway safety within the European Union, aims at the uniformity in all Member States of a common application of safety management, evaluation and control of risk against changes in:

Some of the risk tolerance principles or criteria that should be taken into account when designing and identifying safety or SIL levels of a railway system are little known. These criteria are identified in CENELEC EN 50126, EN 50128 and EN 50129 standards, and they must be considered when developing a new equipment, system or installation or, when...

The accreditation/ validation of railway products in accordance with ADIF regulations is an approval process that has developed the railway infrastructure management in Spain to ensure safety, efficiency and sustainability in construction, maintenance and operation of the railway network under its management.

LCC is the set of studies evaluating the TOTAL cost of a product, system or installation, taking into account not only its purchase value (CAPEX, Capital Expenditures), but also its total cost to be used (OPEX, Operating Expenses): cost of its maintenance, cost of its spare parts, cost of dismantling, cost of keeping the installation in degraded...

From a formal point of view, the set of software sub-systems does not have a failure rate, that is, its MBTF is infinite. In any case, MTBF is evidenced by electronic equipment running the software.