Managing safety, performance, and efficiency of signalling power in CP7: Best in class asset management
September 21, 2023
As the railway industry enters Control Period 7 (CP7), Network Rail faces mounting pressure to deliver greater efficiency while operating within tighter financial constraints. Rising inflation, economic uncertainty, and public spending pressures have led many to describe CP7 as the “make-do-and-mend” control period.
For asset managers, this means one thing: achieving more with less while continuing to maintain safety, operational performance, reliability, and sustainability across the network.
The Challenge of Asset Management in CP7
Across the industry, there has been increasing discussion around extending the operational life of ageing assets into CP8. While this approach may help defer capital expenditure, it has also raised concerns among the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) and wider railway stakeholders regarding safety, reliability, and long-term network resilience.
As a result, Life Extension Works (LEW) are expected to play a critical role throughout CP7. However, successful life extension strategies depend on one key capability: understanding the true condition and remaining life of the asset.
Without accurate asset intelligence, operators risk either intervening too early and overspending, or intervening too late and suffering performance failures, safety risks, and costly disruption.
This creates a growing need for data-driven asset management strategies that minimise intervention, maximise asset availability, and reduce environmental impact.
Why Signalling Power Supplies Remain a Critical Risk
Over recent control periods, the rail industry has made significant progress in understanding the failure modes of high-profile assets such as switches and crossings, overhead line equipment (OLE), earthworks, and drainage systems.
However, less visible infrastructure such as signalling power supplies (SPS) still presents a major operational challenge.
Few railway assets have as direct an impact on network performance as signalling power systems. Failures can cause widespread disruption, service delays, safety incidents, missed performance targets, and costly emergency interventions.
At the same time, the maintenance and fault-finding environment surrounding SPS assets is often invasive, time-critical, and high risk.
Traditionally, signalling power renewals have relied heavily on periodic testing and asset age profiling. Five-yearly testing programmes provide only limited snapshots of asset condition and can be heavily influenced by temporary environmental conditions at the time of inspection.
This leaves asset managers with insufficient insight into the true health of the asset and little opportunity to implement targeted or spot renewals.
Moving Beyond Basic Compliance Monitoring
Historically, monitoring technologies for signalling power systems have focused primarily on electrical safety compliance and alarm generation when predefined thresholds are exceeded.
While compliance with BS7671 remains essential, this approach does not provide the level of condition insight required for modern asset management.
Recognising this challenge, Network Rail and Viper Innovations began collaborating in 2018 to develop a more advanced and proactive approach to signalling power monitoring.
The result was CableGuardian.
CableGuardian: Advanced Condition Monitoring for Signalling Power Assets
CableGuardian is the only proven technology designed to deliver deep operational insight into signalling power assets, supporting both maintenance and project delivery teams.
The system continuously monitors insulation resistance (IR) and insulation capacitance (IC) to industry-leading levels, enabling operators to identify degradation trends long before failure occurs.
By monitoring cables, switchgear, and transformers continuously across multiple control periods, CableGuardian enables asset owners to:
- Detect degradation before service-affecting failures occur
- Plan renewals years in advance
- Deliver targeted Life Extension Works (LEW)
- Support evidence-based spot renewals
- Reduce unnecessary blanket replacement programmes
- Improve asset availability and operational reliability
This allows rail organisations to move away from age-based renewals toward truly condition-based asset management.
Delivering Minimum Viable Renewals and Sustainability Gains
In a financially constrained CP7 environment, efficiency and sustainability are becoming increasingly important drivers of project delivery.
CableGuardian enables engineers to adopt minimum viable product (MVP) renewal strategies by identifying exactly which assets require intervention and which can safely remain in service.
This approach helps to:
- Reduce capital expenditure
- Minimise the use of virgin materials
- Reduce waste from unnecessary renewals
- Improve sustainability outcomes
- Minimise disruptive maintenance activity
By reducing renewal scope and extending asset life safely, organisations can deliver significant operational and environmental efficiencies across the network.
In many cases, CableGuardian can also help remove the need for expensive auto-reconfiguration systems by supporting RAMS requirements through continuous condition monitoring and predictive asset intelligence.
Enabling Predict-and-Prevent Maintenance
Beyond life extension strategies, CableGuardian enables true predict-and-prevent maintenance capability across signalling power systems.
In addition to insulation resistance and capacitance monitoring, the system continuously tracks:
- Voltage
- Current
- Voltage drop
- Overloads
- Power sags and swells
- High resistance contacts
- Poorly installed or degraded joints
This allows operators to detect issues linked to signal reversions, power-related failures, and Category B SPaDs before they escalate into operational incidents.
Working collaboratively with Network Rail, Viper Innovations has also helped modify standards and implement technical variations that allow CableGuardian to replace certain periodic maintenance activities.
This significantly reduces:
- Boots-on-ballast maintenance activity
- Disruptive disconnections
- Vehicle movements
- Operational expenditure
- Carbon emissions associated with maintenance delivery
The result is a safer, more efficient, and more sustainable approach to signalling power asset management.
Flexible Deployment Models for CP7
With capital budgets under pressure during CP7, many railway organisations are now exploring alternative asset delivery and information service models.
Increasingly, asset intelligence and monitoring capabilities are being viewed through a data-as-a-service lens, enabling organisations to access critical information without large upfront infrastructure investment.
CableGuardian supports both capital expenditure and operational expenditure deployment strategies, including hybrid delivery models tailored to customer requirements.
Viper Innovations has already worked with rail clients across the UK to provide:
- Data-as-a-service deployments
- Campaign-based fault finding
- Targeted monitoring projects
- Flexible rollout strategies for both mainline and regional rail networks
This flexibility allows organisations to deploy advanced signalling power monitoring technology even in low-capital environments while continuing to meet safety, performance, and efficiency targets.
The Future of SPS Asset Management in CP7 and Beyond
As CP7 progresses, the rail industry must find smarter ways to maintain ageing infrastructure while balancing safety, performance, sustainability, and cost pressures.
For signalling power systems, achieving this balance depends on having accurate, continuous, and actionable asset intelligence.
CableGuardian enables railway organisations to transition from reactive maintenance and blanket renewals toward predictive, evidence-based asset management strategies that maximise operational performance and extend asset life safely.
For organisations looking to improve signalling power safety, deliver effective Life Extension Works, reduce operational costs, or implement smarter renewal strategies during CP7, CableGuardian provides a proven path forward.
To learn more about CableGuardian and signalling power asset management solutions from Viper Innovations, get in touch now.