We Andys will soon have been PWI Technical Content Managers for two years and we hope the content we’ve been bringing you so far has been interesting and engaging. We thought that this Journal’s “Andy Squared” would be a good opportunity to take stock and let you know more about the content and activity we are responsible for, and how we would really like you to engage with and contribute to this. We’ll cover the different types of technical content and activity we look after with one at a time:
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Journal technical articles are a mainstay of the PWI’s published content. You will have noticed that over the last year or so that the Journal has been evolving and we are now in the position where the primary function of the Journal is to publish articles that we hope members will find technically interesting and stimulating. The Journal sets out to cover technical subjects, activities and innovations of interest to practitioners in the contracting, client, consultant, academic, standards setting and products and services communities. We want to provide “bridges of understanding” between these communities that lead to useful development of knowledge and its application. Through these articles, we aim to tackle the requirements and problems experienced by practitioners and how they are solved by innovators, researchers or by people who can pass on their experiences.
We would really like to encourage readers to contribute articles for publication in future Journals! Doing this meets key objectives for personal development and CPD, sharing your knowledge with others and letting them share with you. So, wherever you are in your career, please think about writing and submitting an article for a future Journal and get in touch if you want any help or advice about how to do this. Articles could (for instance) be about the delivery of a project, approaches to maintenance, how you have developed or applied new tools and technologies, research and innovation, meeting the challenges of climate change and sustainability or how you have overcome difficult engineering problems – the list is endless!
We typically look for articles to be between 2,000 and 4,000 words long (although we often publish papers outside these boundaries) illustrated with interesting tables, diagrams and (safety compliant!) photos. Go on – give it a go!!
TEXTBOOKS
The PWI has published and sells a number of really useful textbooks including “Understanding Track Engineering”, “Understanding Rails and Rail welding”, “Switch and Crossing Maintenance”, “Design of Switches and Crossings” to name a few. These can be ordered from the PWI website shop.
We are currently putting together a strategic plan for reviewing and revising these books to make sure they are up to date and relevant to the tools, technologies and practices of today. We very much want to include willing PWI members to play a role in this, so if you want to volunteer to review, revise or author sections of our textbooks of the future, please let us know – we will be very grateful. Again, this sort of involvement really boosts your personal development and the quality of your CPD!
THE PWI’S KNOWLEDGE HUB
The Knowledge Hub on the PWI’s website is your portal to treasured technical knowledge curated by the PWI! From here, you are able to search for relevant Journal articles, seminar presentations, handbooks, track guides and video content such as recorded PWI section meetings. Some of these generic resources are discussed below with a call for you to be involved with refreshing them or adding to their volume.
TRACK GUIDES & INDUSTRY HANDBOOKS
A wide range of Track Guides and Handbooks have been created over the years and can be accessed through the PWI website. For example, the “Guide to Track Stiffness” produced as a result of a Track Stiffness Working Group Initiative and edited by track experts from the University of Southampton was published in 2016 and can be downloaded if you are a PWI member. More recently, the “Geocells Technical Guide” has been written by Network Rail and peer reviewed by experts from the PWI, consultancies, international universities and from Network Rail itself. This valuable new guide will soon be available through the Knowledge Hub on the PWI website.
As for best practice handbooks, a dozen or so of these excellent little documents were written and published in the earlier 2000s by collaborating railway contracting and client organisations operating back then. These publications reflected best practice at the time they were published and whilst this may now sometimes have moved on, they remain valuable resources to refer to.
Many of these are available through the PWI’s Knowledge Hub and plans are afoot to refresh them or at least provide accompanying statements that describe key changes in practice since they were written. Please get in touch if you would like to play a part in this process.
PWI CONFERENCE, SEMINAR & SECTION MEETING PRESENTATIONS
Under “normal” circumstances, the PWI holds at least three national conferences or seminars each year and the presentations given at these as well as presentations from the great many Section meetings held each year form a hugely valuable set of resources. Many of these presentations can be searched for and downloaded from the Knowledge Hub as PDF or PowerPoint documents. Increasingly there are also videos of Section meeting presentations that you can view on YouTube, accessing them via the PWI Knowledge Hub.
THE PRACTICAL TRACKWORK CHALLENGE
Andy Steele is taking the lead in organising the Practical Trackwork Challenge (PTC) that, Covid-19 permitting, will finally take place in October 2021. The PTC is one of our most popular events where we as a community of track infrastructure engineers help a heritage railway with a track renewal, whilst sharing our skills with our Corporate Members who can send delegates to the event who have little or no experience of track renewals work. We are always looking for help at this event in the way of skilled demonstrators and trainers, in particular land surveyors, small tools and plant operators and track supervisors. This event also provides an opportunity to demonstrate new technology and innovative methods of working. Andy Steele is currently putting a five-year plan together touring this event all over the UK. Please get in touch if you think you can contribute in any way to the PWI Practical Trackwork Challenge.
We hope this summary gives you an idea of what the PWI makes available for you to access, engage with and use to expand your technical knowledge and horizon. We also hope that you will consider contributing to making these resources even better in the future, by using your unique input to produce new content or to improve and update existing content for sharing with and expanding the knowledge of fellow PWI members.