As the population of our largest city in Australia, Sydney, grows year on year with a 1.3% growth rate, we need to ensure that our public transport systems are world class facilities that support the needs of our expanding communities. Sydney Trains are committed to doing this with their mission to keep Sydney moving by delivering safe, clean, reliable, customer-focused and efficient rail services through their key priorities of; operational excellence everyday, customer at the centre, sustainability is our future.

Sydney Trains have delivered on these principles through their recent Measurement and Inspection Digital Twin initiative which uses innovative technology and digital solutions to automate manual business processes and enable increased train services in the future to support the growing population of Sydney. A LiDAR point cloud is acquired every six months of the entire 1,599km of track and a digital 3D representation of the network is created and processed to provide both measurement and visual data outputs to meet the Engineering Standards of over 10 Use Cases. Currently this data is captured, recorded and processed via manual labour processes today with tools such as tape measures, binoculars and the subjective human eye.

MIDT has been delivered over three years through a staged gate approach which promotes stakeholder buy in and continuous improvement prior to implementation to ensure the solution is financially sustainable and operationally effective. It is an innovative concept that improves track worker safety and increases maintenance efficiencies by transforming static, manual, paper-based activities to automated, data driven, digital processes to build the backbone of an Enterprise Digital Twin platform.

For more information about Sydney Trains, visit transport.nsw.gov.au/sydneytrains