Provision of a Stations Made Easy Service.

Descriptions

Train Information Services Limited (TISL), trading as National Rail Enquiries (NRE), is a company wholly owned by Train Operating Companies (TOCs) responsible for providing a range of services to TOCs and their customers. The main service is the www.nationalrail.co.uk online service providing rail journey planner, live train information and comprehensive information about the rail industry including service disruption and station facilities information, special offers and conditions of carriage.The service receives on average 19 000 000 visits per month across the web and mobile channels with significant short-term peaks driven by travel disruption. One of the main systems supporting NRE website is the Knowledgebase (KB) which provides disruption, station and other static information. KB is available to the public via www.nationalrail.co.uk and has an industry only internal version that includes additional, industry-specific information in addition to the data already available to the public. KB data is maintained by NRE and the TOC editors via customised OpenText content management system (CMS).Together with the Commercial Department of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), NRE supplies the Stations Made Easy (SME) application that provides station layout information for the railway network across Great Britain (2 500+ stations of varied size and complexity) to disabled and elderly passengers. Currently the application has usage of approximately 800 000 visits per year and is available on the desktop site only. Station information provided via SME comes from 2 sources:— Station surveys carried out by a third party; collected data is then uploaded into KB (pre-defined routeing data, route descriptions, images, HTML code; example files can be found on www.nationalrail.co.uk/SME); and— KB station information updated by NRE and station editors via OpenText CMS.SME is largely integrated into KB. Station survey data is uploaded into a separate data base and so is the relevant station information provided by CMS editors. Data is then published on the site via OpenText. SME data can be edited via CMS and overwrites survey data.Both KB and SME are hosted on Amazon Webservices (AWS) infrastructure and supported by an NRE contracted service integration and management (SIAM) provider.As the current SME contract is nearing its term NRE seeks to procure a replacement for the existing application that will meet the following objectives:— Increase reputation of the industry primarily amongst disabled customers;— Increase TOC revenue by removing barriers to train travel by disabled people;— Improve user experience of SME;— Improve data maintenance process to make it easier and more accessible to TOCs and Network Rail and thus easier and cheaper to keep up-to-date;— Ensure that implemented solution is cost effective in meeting its requirements;— Increase SME user base and usage; and— Increase customer satisfaction.Delivery of the project will include the following Components:— Component 1 Data collection and updates (note that NRE are looking to re-use as much of the existing data as possible.)Station surveying services will be required for stations that undergo major refurbishment work or for new stations. Initial scope of a survey will include physical layout of the station, accessibility related features at a stations, main station facilities, platforms, barrier free routes/routeing data across the station. Full scope of surveys will be fully defined as part of the tender and delivery phase but will include assessing station plan and. Data collected will need to be delivered to the central repository (Component 2 below) for processing, collation and integration through SME.— Component 2 Data aggregation and processing:Survey data collected via component 1 above will be processed by combining with any open /crowd sourced/CMS data and uploaded into the SME application. This will include interpretation of routing data. If crowd sourcing is used, moderation services may be required. Layout information will be translated into Component 3.— Component 3 Station plan editing:It is envisaged that a mapping tool will be used by the station surveyors in Component 1. In addition NRE wishes to give the ability to edit features within station plans to station staff. Therefore we require a tool, be that off-the-shelf or custom-built solution, that will allow easy manipulation of station features, comply with the overall front-end design (Component 4) and can be integrated as appropriate with KB CMS.— Component 4 Front-end design and build:Provision of UX, designs, front end code — includes design of station plans (optionally with interactive features and routeing) as well as other features of the application. New SME will be available on desktop and portable devices preferably responsive site.NRE wish to use the existing OpenText CMS as a tool to manage SME data. An extent of integration with the OpenText CMS will be required and will be defined as part of delivery. A visual representation of a hypothetical solution can be found on www.nationalrail.co.uk/SME)It is envisaged that detail of station information will differ for various stations, for example, large stations such as London Bridge are likely to require more detailed information and more features than small stations such as Drayton Park. Information standards will be defined as part of the full tender documentation. Insofar as appropriate station data updates will be completed by NRE-appointed staff.The new SME service will be hosted on the existing AWS infrastructure and will be supported by the existing the NRE service management processes. This includes all hosting and first line support services. Any awarded party will be required to provide 2nd/3rd line support on ongoing basis as appropriate.