RTIS confirmed as Colas Rail's No 1 performing S&T supplier

We are pleased to announce that we have been confirmed Colas Rail’s “number one” S&T supplier for all Period 5 works, whilst at the same time becoming their number one “overall” S&T supplier for 2018-2019. The recognition as number one S&T supplier covers all areas of Colas Rail’s Plain Line and S&C works that are undertaken in the Western, Kent, Wessex, Anglia and LNW routes. 

The results are extremely pleasing and are calculated on a monthly basis on a supplier’s ability to supply resources, site performance, number of site visits undertaken, conforming to Colas PPE regulations, reporting of close calls / near misses, exceedances and a supplier’s ability to be flexible with their resource pool. To date we have covered over 35,000 man hours of site works and by adopting heavily into Colas Rail’s safety values, this has been undertaken with zero major incidents or accidents.

Simon Jamieson RTIS CEO said: “The achievement of becoming Colas Rail’s number one supplier for S&T is a real feather in our cap. This is a genuine all round achievement for our business, with everyone from our Ops team to our on track IRSE signalling engineers all providing Colas a first class service. We hope to continue in the same vein for the remainder of the 2018-2019 period, and look to build on this recognition with the further opportunities that Colas Rail present to us.”

New works success for RTIS

Once again through August we have steadily continued to deliver a high volume of signalling and labour works across a number of different customers. As we come to our financial year end it is pleasing to announce that we have seen a significant increase in our annual turnover figure from 2016/17, with 5 new customers also being added to our work base.

A good start to our new financial year is a package of works that we will be conducting in the Sussex/Wessex areas. This is the survey of some 240 signalling assets to assess the capacity for installing Remote Condition Monitoring equipment. This package of works includes all management, SSOW planning, site delivery, record keeping and document control of these works.   

On the RTIS staff front we welcome back Keith Hall who joins us in a Signalling Engineering Manager role. Keith will be responsible for delivering and tendering signalling project works, as well as providing his expert knowledge to our customers as required. Keith has been in the rail industry for over 17 years and rejoins RTIS from Colas Rail where he mainly managed works on the Wessex Capacity Alliance Scheme amongst many others. Also joining us is Ian Radford, who with his experience will be taking up a SMTH team leader role with the knowledge he has in many different signalling and points systems.   

Congratulations go to Nic Munro and Phil Prior for achieving their SWL1 competency and Bradley Thompson for passing EBI 200/400 installation courses.

In addition to our current workload, we are also busy working on a number of tenders for both our civils & signalling customers, which if successful, will strengthen our order book as we move later on into 2018/19. 

Mary Wood retires from RTIS - good luck !

During July we are pleased with the continuation of our signalling and labour works across a number of different customers. Our trackside works have been spread greatly across the UK and have all been undertaken with zero accidents or incidents across the worksites that we have been involved with. Much of our signalling works (with the blessing of our customer’s Signalling Project Managers & Engineers), has enabled us the opportunity to bring in many of our assistant installers to work alongside our more experienced members of staff. This helps us creates staff progression, allows skills learnt in the classroom to be realized in a trackside environment and more importantly creates more qualified IRSE engineers for the future! 

It is with sadness though that we had to say a goodbye to our long serving Operations Manager Mary Wood who has been with the company for over 16 years. In all that she has been involved with at RTIS, Mary has always given 100% effort during her time at the company which started off in a Health and Safety role, then becoming our HR Manager, until moving into her Operations role in 2012. Mary will no doubt enjoy her well- earned retirement with her family, grandchildren and her love of cruising around the oceans!

We are pleased to welcome both Carleen Frost and Christian Rouse to the RTIS family. Carly will be taking up a role as one of our IRSE licensed installers, with Christian moving into the training side of our business as a technical trainer, we wish you both good luck. Also congratulations to Mo Khan for achieving his IRSE Team Leader license which has been well earned over the years. What makes this more special is that Mo came from humble beginnings through our assistant installer program many years ago.

We have also delivered signal base and power works directly for Network Rail at Romford to help broaden the types of work that we are able to deliver. On the back of this successful delivery we have more work in this area planned for August 2018.

In addition to our current workload, we are also busy working on a number of tenders for both our civils & signalling customers, which if successful, will strengthen our order book as we move later on into 2018. 

RTIS June news update

Throughout June we have been busy delivering our services to both mainline and LUL infrastructures and have been supporting a variety of key customers such as Alstom, Atkins, Volker Rail, Siemens, Colas Rail, Amey and Bombardier. During this period we have performed with a zero accident/incident rate along with positive feedback on all our S&T teams which has led to repeat and continuous works.

During June we are also pleased to have become approved to work for both Hotchtief and Cleshar which  enables us to support them with any future signalling works they might encounter in the foreseeable future. With CP6 approaching we find ourselves approved to work for 34 companies giving us a firm footing for companies that need support with maintenance, new signalling installation works, SMTH/G110, Test & Commissioning, safety critical, civils, electrical and lump sum project works.  

Moving into July we are supporting Siemens Rail with signalling resource for a major 13 day blockade at Oxford, along with Volker Rail on LUL closures on the 4LM project. We also commence installation works in the Redhill area in conjunction with the Thameslink Resilience Project which runs until March 2019. 

We continue to be pro-active in booking many of our staff on SWL1 conversion courses to enable our staff to work as stand alone teams and additionally we have continued with our  re-fresher programme of manual handling, working at heights, SPWEE and first aid training. What is pleasing is that through training and site experience we now have many assistant installers ready with enough evidence to begin processing for their IRSE installer licences, which enhances our capabilities and continues with the ethos of our business of creating signalling engineers for the future.  

NWR training success and 350 up for RTIS

As we approach the end of May, we are delighted to have achieved another significant milestone for our business. We can now lay claim to have supported our customers (along with delivering signalling projects ourselves) in over 350 railway signalling projects since our company inception back in 2012.  

The 350 projects have been a real mixture; supporting first tier signalling companies with major re-signalling schemes, our own signalling project works, Plain Line and S&C track renewals works, HOBC track renewals, SWTH commissioning works, maintenance works, Signalling Project Management support and the provision of Signalling CRE/TIC expertise.

In order to continue our success, we remain focused on investing, training and producing first class signalling engineers and always place a strong emphasis on delivering works aligned to our company values. Through a combination of signalling projects and significant labour frameworks we aim to reach the 400 project milestone by the end of 2018.

As well reaching the 350 milestone, our sister company RT Training Solutions has also been fantastically successful in winning one of Network Rail’s key Rail Skills Training Frameworks (for multiple signalling lots). The 2 year framework will cover all areas of the UK, with the option of providing technical trainers to all of Network Rail’s super schools, in addition to hosting training at our very own signalling academy in Ipswich. The key areas of the training framework include a host of disciplines covering signalling design, signalling installation, signalling mantenance and signalling works test
ing courses.