Hitachi Rail has acquired the Omnicom digital rail monitoring business from Balfour Beatty.

The company will become part of Hitachi Rail’s HMax digital asset management business.

Omnicom provides software and hardware for surveying, inspecting and monitoring rail infrastructure assets including its infrastructure monitoring system, gauge clearance measurement, line visual inspection and scanning infrastructure. Its monitoring systems can be installed on trains and use edge computing and machine learning to provide near real-time anomaly detection on rail tracks. The technology can enhance the decision making for maintenance planning and the asset lifecycle.

With a more than 25-year track record in railway technology, Omnicom’s monitoring and geometry measurement technology is deployed by a number of large users. The technology collects trillions of bytes of images per day, helping users optimise trackside maintenance.

Omnicom’s remote monitoring and measurement technology will feed into Hitachi Rail’s HMax (www.hitachirail.com/products-and-solutions/digital-asset-management) suite, enabling the technology to be brought to the global market. HMax, launched at InnoTrans in September last year, is digital asset management technology that seamlessly integrates live data from the train and the surrounding rail infrastructure into one platform that uses AI and machine learning to process the data. It extracts knowledge and applies it to achieve operational and service enhancements including traffic optimisation, energy consumption reduction and an on-condition predictive maintenance process.

HMax also enables huge volumes of data to be processed at the edge on the trains or infrastructure in real time, with only relevant information sent back to the operational control centres. This improves the speed actionable insights reach transport operators, as previously it could take days for data to be processed in maintenance locations.

“Plugging Omnicom’s pioneering track monitoring tools into our digital asset management platform will further strengthen our global offer to optimise customers’ rail services and the surrounding infrastructure,” said Hitachi Rail CEO Giuseppe Marino. “New technology such as our HMax platform demonstrates the power of AI to enhance the performance of our railway infrastructure and systems.”

Sanjay Razdan, managing director of Omnicom (omnicomrail.com), added: “This acquisition strengthens Omnicom’s ability to collaborate, innovate and deliver AI-enabled systems and services while further enhancing the safety, efficiency and reliability of rail infrastructure, building on our proven data driven options which help predict and prevent railway asset failures.”

With revenues of over €7bn and 24,000 employees across more than 50 countries, Hitachi Rail (www.hitachirail.com) is a partner to world transport organisations and is famous for Japan’s iconic high speed bullet train.