Alstom wins prestigious Railway Industry Innovation Award
in UK

Shortlisted against entries from Eurostar and Metronet Rail,
Alstom won the Performance and Operations category, which is
for companies who have a proven record of improving performance
and operations by developing new processes or by clearly
defining the operational necessities.

Kevin Prendergast, Principal Engineer at the UKs
Midlands Traincare Centre, and Lee Jackson, Systems Support
Manager, collected the award at a Ceremony in London on 1 July
2008.

"I'm delighted that Alstom have won at the Innovation
Awards, said Virgin Trains Production Director Ross
Spicer. The Fleet Console system really is a huge
technological step forward and means that the engineers who
maintain our Pendolino trains at Alstom have all the
information they need at their fingertips to deliver a truly
high performing service. This means that we now provide
significantly better levels of train reliability to our
customers than ever before."

Building on the eTrain data gathering system,
Fleet Console is Alstoms pioneering approach to recovery
and analysis of train fault data. By converting raw train data
into business information, the web-based Fleet Console tool
drives our maintenance activity and, in addition, provides
reports to the operator and infrastructure providers. Users can
subscribe to warning messages that pop-up directly on their
computer screen, immediately delivering targeted information
directly to the people who need to take action. Engineers are
able to carry out a diagnosis of any faults on the train before
it returns to a Traincare Centre and subsequently to ensure
ahead-of-time planning of material and labour requirements. It
allows the team tasked with taking care of the fleet of
Pendolino trains to provide our customer, Virgin Trains, the
benefit of an extremely reduced train downtime and maximum
operational reliability: An integrated regimented business
process that allows us to plan for todays failures
tonight.