ICT Group Consortium wins ProRail contract PITP Traffic Control
Press release
The ICT Group consortium, consisting of ICT Netherlands, InTraffic, and Technolution, won parcel 1 of the ProRail IT Partners (PITP) agreement. For a period of up to ten years, the consortium will be responsible for the construction and maintenance of the ProRail applications used for railway traffic and infrastructure control.
Combining expertise
This means that ProRail continue their cooperation with InTraffic. Part of the parcel awarded to the consortium is the Traffic Control (PRL) application. InTraffic built the PRL application and developed and maintained it for over twenty years.
For this new agreement, InTraffic sought to work together with their parent company ICT Group and with Technolution. While InTraffic has profound domain knowledge of railways, ICT Group and Technolution add expertise from other domains. Including extensive experience with agile software development (SAFe) and the development of advanced electronics and sensors for the benefit of predictive maintenance.
Client and contractor in one agile team
InTraffic and ProRail already worked in close cooperation, but under this new contract, they intend to cooperate even more and operate as one team. “There is no difference between client and contractor anymore; colleagues from all companies work together in one team and are collectively responsible for the entire software development cycle. This responsibility is not even limited to the ICT Group consortium and ProRail, but also extends to the other PIT partners, who are responsible for other parcels”, says Bob Brands, Business Unit Manager for InTraffic.
Speeding up innovation in critical software mission
This new form of cooperation is strongly focussed on innovation. Paul Meerman, Business Development Manager for Technolution, says: “The current labour shortage underlines the importance of making railway traffic even more efficient. That is possible if we invest in predicting malfunctions, work with scenario planning, and create possibilities to take over a traffic control post’s entire range of duties remotely.” Technolution and ICT Group gained extensive experience in these areas in other markets, such as the operation of technical tunnel installations and traffic management systems for the Dutch Ministry of Waterways and Public Work (Rijkswaterstaat).
“We facilitate the growing need for sustainable mobility in the Netherlands, together with our partners. That means 30% more passengers and 50% more goods per train over the next years. Digitalisation and data-driven operation play key parts in this. We are very happy with this form of cooperation. The visions of the three partners in this consortium are complementary to our own vision for the future: bringing innovations from other, mission-critical domains to the railways, so that technology can contribute even more to railway traffic control and the safety on and around the tracks.”