Irish Rail has fired the Spanish IT multinational Indra Sistemas, which had been developing the much-delayed system to manage the movement of trains across the network, and is now preparing a legal case for damages.
In May it emerged the State-owned rail operator had written down by €50 million the value of its investment in a new national train control centre in Dublin largely due to problems with an IT project known as the traffic management system (TMS).
The new TMS was designed to replace the railway network’s existing control systems, which are considered to be virtually obsolete. On May 29th, for example, Irish Rail experienced a serious systems failure that led to significant delays for passengers.
The Government has earmarked almost €20 million over three years to try to shore up control systems on key railway arteries around Dublin, but it is considered enhanced arrangements will be needed to facilitate the Dart-plus railway expansion plans in the capital and new services planned for Cork and elsewhere.
The Spanish IT company this weekend said it was disappointed at the move by Irish Rail and criticised the manner in which the project had been handled by the State company. It said Irish Rail had depended too heavily on external advisers, mainly from abroad.
Indra also said that critical knowledge about the unique characteristics and limitations of the Irish Rail network had neither been comprehensively documented nor systematically shared with the project team. It said key Irish Rail personnel who would use the planned system had not been actively involved in the project until its fifth year.
“Indra was required to design the solution without visibility of infrastructure behaviours that materially affected system performance,” it told The Irish Times.
Indra said it had made every effort to deliver a critical aspect of digital infrastructure for the rail network.
“Irish Rail did not or was unable to collaborate on the implementation of the TMS in a way that would be considered standard for operators in other countries. For the first five years of the contract, the absence of effective sponsorship from Irish Rail coupled with its failure to appoint and empower suitably qualified internal technical experts to assume leadership of the project created a significant governance and oversight gap,” the company said.
The TMS project to integrate signals, communications and other systems on the railway network was originally expected to cost about €19 million, but was beset by years of delays and cost overruns.
Irish Rail told the Oireachtas transport committee in June it had written down payments of €28.2 million made to Indra. It said it had also written off more than €17 million spent on other project-management costs to support Indra in its work.
The TMS was initially expected to be in place two years ago. But the Irish Rail board was told it could be the summer of next year before the first phase of the project – covering the Dublin-Rosslare line – would be introduced and that it could be well into the 2030s before the full system was operational.
The crunch for the project came in April after Irish Rail expressed deep unhappiness at the testing results of the latest version of the software delivered by Indra.
In late June, following a meeting of the Irish Rail board, the company sought approval from the National Transport Authority (NTA) – which provided funding for the TMS project – to end its contract with Indra, which was agreed in 2020, using provisions known as termination for convenience.
It is understood the NTA backed the move in mid-July and within days Irish Rail had terminated the contract with Indra. The railway company is engaged in a final wind-down of its dealings with Indra, which are expected to conclude next month.
Irish Rail has sought NTA approval to publish what is known as a voluntary ex-ante transparency notice to tell the market that it plans to enter into a deal with another company, Siemens Mobility – without going through a formal competition – to deploy another system called Westcad across its network.
At the same time Irish Rail is understood to be preparing a legal claim for damages against Indra. It is understood it wants to issue a default notice to Indra by mid-October.
In a statement, Irish Rail said its management continued to progress the implementation of board decisions “relating to the Indra contracts and the proposed way forward to deliver a necessary replacement to the existing signalling control system, arising from Indra’s failure to deliver a product fit and safe for deployment on our rail network”.