We recently had the opportunity to interview Richard Potter, Managing Director, and Chrisy McLeod, Director, at RADD Solutions about the complexities of software development standards in the rail industry. We spoke at length about their perspectives on industry guidelines, challenges faced by SMEs, and potential solutions to support them in the future. Read more the interview in full below:

Can you provide an overview of your role?

We are a specialist IT engineering consultancy, providing bespoke software to clients in the rail industry. In simple terms, we either develop new systems at the request of the client, enhance and/or maintain existing systems, where the client wishes us to take them on, and also run these systems on behalf of our clients where requested. We manage a diverse range of systems across the industry, and therefore do not have a specific role within the provision of rail services.

What do you enjoy about working in the rail industry?

The sheer size and diversity of the rail industry ensures that our work is never routine, driving us to constantly innovate, which is beneficial for both our staff and our technical growth. Additionally, the systems we manage are overall “mission critical” and significantly impact our clients’ services. This provides our engineers with fantastic job satisfaction, although it can be challenging.

Do you believe that the current guidelines in place adequately address the safety requirements of systems?

We follow industry best practices when it comes to the security and resilience of the systems we maintain, often exceeding them due to the nature of the industry.

The systems we provide are specified, designed and built with client specialist staff, whose responsibility is to ensure systems are designed to deliver the appropriate safety parameters required. The client will know the specific guidelines for the business workflows involved, and this will become part of the requirements.

The guidelines that are applied directly to software development for the railway are either general guidelines that either produce excessive amounts of documentation with no audience, or are extremely specific to a niche part of the railway. Either way the guidelines used are ineffective and rapidly become out of date. Instead, we have found that honest communication between client and supplier allows the appropriate and most recent software industry best practices to be applied.

At which stage would you identify standards as becoming a barrier for SMEs in the rail industry? If so, can you provide any examples?

Standards become a barrier for SMEs in the rail industry when they cater mainly to large suppliers with expensive, off-the-shelf products, making them unsuitable for smaller, agile companies that work with narrow margins. For example, a recently mandated procurement system, designed for large product and service providers, required large amounts of irrelevant information, taking several man-days to complete, and ultimately offered no real benefit except to meet an accounting standard used by government bodies, including rail providers.

Have you tried to implement any new software development standards amongst SMEs in the rail industry? If so, how did this go for you?

While we utilise software industry best practices where applicable, the innovative nature of our solutions means we are constantly flexing and adapting standards to suit individual projects to deliver them as effectively and efficiently as possible. The software development community is very large and very vocal. There are continuous gatherings and discussions which constantly develop best practices across an incredibly diverse industry. So yes, individuals from SME’s will be in regular contact about best practices, but there is limited consensus, and these best practices would not be railway specific.

We’ve seen very little, if any, collaboration on standards for software development within the railway industry. Standards are usually applied to software development work when they are written into framework agreements. These are generic standards which focus on documentation and risk. They are determined in workshops months before being required and enforce standards that are themselves years old.

Although we are very much in favour of appropriate standards being implemented across the railway industry, we feel it would require a new and dynamic approach, which would need to be supported by the rail industry..

Do you believe the rail industry should offer any financial support to assist SME’s in meeting new standards for software development?

Specialist SMEs like RADD Solutions typically absorb the costs of reviewing and implementing industry standard changes. However, given the narrow margins SMEs are expected to deliver to, it is crucial for the rail industry to recognise the financial impact of imposing new or changed standards on SMEs.

Support could be offered by providing subsidies to counter the cost of implementation, or more importantly by supporting SME’s in attaining the standards with resources and training. This would have the added benefit of attracting innovative and creative SMEs to the railway and support the development and growth of those businesses.

Is there anything else you wish to highlight/include?

We have authentic relationships with all our individual clients, and are trusted to deliver cost-effective, high-quality and well-maintained systems, using the best practices and standards. We recognise the desire for the development of industry-wide software standards, especially to allow clients to bring software in-house, should there be a problem with a provider.

However, this desire must be balanced by applying standards appropriate to each solution. In an industry where innovative solutions require diverse technologies and tools, the implementation of a “one size fits all” set of standards may be inappropriate and stifle the ability to deliver a first-class cost-effective solution.

Thanks for your contribution, Richard, and Chrisy. To find out more about RADD Solutions, please visit RADD Solutions Limited